#aj3i5lOni5 


BERKELEY 

ARY 

•  ;-Y  Of 


I 


MY  LITERARY  PASSIONS 
CRITICISM  ^  FICTION 


fy  Mnim  i 


MY  LITERARY  PASSIONS 
CRITICISM  ^  FICTION 


W.     D.     H  O  W  E  L  L  S 


ILLUSTRATED 


HARPER  a'  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
NEW  YORK   AND   LONDON 


Copyright,  i8qi,  1910,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 
Copyright,   1895,  by  W.  D.  Howells 


LOAN  SrACK 


9jrz 


CONTENTS 

MY  LITERARY  PASSIONS 

CHAPTKR  PAGE 

Bibliographical. ix 

I.  The  Bookcase  at  Home 3 

II.  Goldsmith 10 

III.  Cervantes 17 

IV.  Irving 23 

V.  First  Fiction  and  Drama 28 

VI.  Longfellow's  "Spanish  Student" 31 

VII.  Scott 33 

VIII.  Lighter  Fancies 36 

IX.  Pope 39 

X.  Various  Preferences 48 

XI.  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin 50 

XII.  OssiAN  .    .     .     . 53 

XIII.  Shakespeare 55 

XIV.  Ik  Marvel G4 

XV.  Dickens 68 

XVI.  Wordsworth,  Lowell,  Chaucer 79 

XVII.  Macaulay 86 

XVIII.  Critics  and  Reviews 90 

XIX.  A  Non-Literary  Episode 93 

XX.  Thackeray 97 

XXI.  "  Lazarillo  de  Tormes" 104 

XXII.  Curtis,  Longfellow,  Schlegel 109 

XXIII.  Tennyson 113 

XXIV.  Heine 124 

XXV.  De  Quincey,  Goethe,  Longfellow 131 

XXVI.  George  Eliot,  Hawthorne,  Goethe,  Heine    .     .  137 

iii 


583 


CONTENTS 

CnAFTER  PAGE 

XXVII.  Charles  Reade 143 

XXVIII.  D.VNTE 148 

XXIX.  GoLDONi,  Manzoni,  D'Azeglio 154 

XXX.  "  Pastor  FiDo,"  "Aminta,"  "  Romola,"  "Yeast," 

"Paul  Ferroll" 161 

XXXI.  Erckmann-Chatrlan,  Bjorstjerne  Bjornson     .  165 

XXXII.  TouRGUENiEP,  Auerbach 169 

XXXIII.  Certain  Preferences  and  Experiences      ,     .     .  173 

XXXIV.  Valdes,     Galdos,     Verga,     Zola,      Trollope, 

Hardy 179 

XXXV.  Tolstoy 183 

« 

CRITICISM  AND  FICTION 193 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

W.  D.  HOWELLS  THE  WEEK   HE  WAS  SEVENTY  YEARS  OLD 

{fbotogravure) Frontispiece 

W.  D'.  HOWELLS,   AGE   EIGHTEEN Facing  p.      4 

CERVANTES "            18 

WILLIAM   MAKEPEACE   THACKERAY "            98 

HEINRICH   HEINE "         126 

DANTE "         150 

COUNT   LYOF   TOLSTOY "         184 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL 

The  papers  collected  here  under  the  name  of  My 
Literary  Passions  were  printed  serially  in  a  periodical 
of  such  vast  circulation  that  they  might  well  have  been 
supposed  to  have  found  there  all  the  acceptance  that 
could  be  reasonably  hoped  for  them,  ISTevertheless,  they 
were  reissued  in  a  volume  the  year  after  they  first  ap- 
peared, in  1895,  and  they  had  a  pleasing  share  of  such 
favor  as  their  author's  books  have  enjoyed.  But  it  is 
to  be  doubted  whether  any  one  liked  reading  them  so 
much  as  he  liked  writing  them — say,  some  time  in  the 
years  1893  and  1894,  in  a  E'ew  York  flat,  where  he 
could  look  from  his  lofty  windows  over  two  miles  and 
a  half  of  woodland  in  Central  Park,  and  halloo  his 
fancy  wherever  he  chose  in  that  faery  realm  of  books 
which  he  re-entered  in  reminiscences  perhaps  too  fond 
at  times,  and  perhaps  always  too  eager  for  the  reader's 
following.  The  name  was  thought  by  the  friendly 
editor  of  the  popular  publication  where  they  were 
serialized  a  main  part  of  such  inspiration  as  they 
might  be  conjectured  to  have,  and  was,  as  seldom  hap- 
pens with  editor  and  author,  cordially  agreed  upon  be- 
fore they  were  begun. 

The  name  says,  indeed,  so  exactly  and  so  fully  what 
they  are  that  little  remains  for  their  bibliographer  to 
add  beyond  the  meagre  historical  detail  here  given. 
Their  short  and  simple  annals  could  be  eked  out  by 
confidences   which  would   not   appreciably   enrich   the 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL 

materials  of  the  literary  history  of  their  time,  and  it 
seems  better  to  leave  them  to  the  imagination  of  such 
posterity  as  they  may  reach.  They  are  rather  helplessly 
frank,  but  not,  I  hope,  with  all  their  rather  helpless 
frankness,  offensively  frank.  They  are  at  least  not  part 
of  the  polemic  which  their  author  sustained  in  the  essays 
following  them  in  this  volume,  and  which  might  have 
been  called,  in  conformity  with  My  Literary  Passions, 
by  the  title  of  My  Literary  Opinions  better  than  by  the 
vague  name  whicli  they  actually  wear. 

They  deal,  to  be  sure,  with  the  office  of  Criticism 
and  the  art  of  Fiction,  and  so  far  their  present  name 
is  not  a  misnomer.  It  follows  them  from  an  earlier 
date  and  could  not  easily  be  changed,  and  it  may  serve 
to  recall  to  an  elder  generation  than  this  the  time 
when  their  author  was  breaking  so  many  lances  in  the 
great,  forgotten  war  between  Realism  and  Romanticism 
that  the  floor  of  the  "  Editor's  Study"  in  Harpers 
Magazine  was  strewn  with  the  embattled  splinters.  The 
"  Editor's  Study  "  is  now  quite  another  place,  but  he 
who  originally  imagined  it  in  1 886,  and  abode  in  it  until 
1892,  made  it  at  once  the  scene  of  such  constant  offence 
that  he  had  no  time,  if  he  had  the  temper,  for  defence. 
The  great  Zola,  or  call  him  the  immense  Zola,  was  the 
prime  mover  in  the  attack  upon  the  masters  of  the 
Romanticistic  school ;  but  he  lived  to  own  that  he  had 
fought  a  losing  fight,  and  there  are  some  proofs  that 
he  was  right.  The  Realists,  who  were  undoubtedly  the 
masters  of  fiction  in  their  passing  generation,  and 
who  prevailed  not  only  in  France,  but  in  Russia,  in 
Scandinavia,  in  Spain,  in  Portugal,  were  overborne  in 
all  Anglo-Saxon  countries  by  the  innumerable  hosts  of 
Romanticism,  who  to  this  day  possess  the  land ;  though 
still,  whenever  a  young  novelist  does  work  instantly 
recognizable  for  its  truth  and  beauty  among  us,  he  is 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL 

seen  and  felt  to  have  ^v^ou^•ht  in  the  spirit  of  Realism. 
N^ot  even  yet,  however,  does  the  average  critic  recognize 
this,  and  such  lesson  as  the  "  Editor's  Study  "  assumed 
to  teach  remains  here  in  all  its  essentials  for  his 
improvement. 

]\Ionth  after  montli  for  the  six  years  in  which  the 
"  Editor's  Study  "  continued  in  the  keeping  of  its  first 
occupant,  its  lesson  was  more  or  less  stormily  delivered, 
to  the  exclusion,  for  the  greater  part,  of  other  prophecy, 
but  it  has  not  been  found  well  to  keep  the  tempestuous 
manner  along  with  the  fulminant  matter  in  this  volume. 
AMien  the  author  came  to  revise  the  material,  he  found 
sins  against  taste  which  his  zeal  for  righteousness  could 
not  suffice  to  atone  for.  He  did  not  hesitate  to  omit  the 
proofs  of  these,  and  so  far  to  make  himself  not  only  a 
precept,  but  an  example  in  criticism.  He  hopes  that 
in  other  and  slighter  things  he  has  bettered  bis  own 
instruction,  and  that  in  form  and  in  fact  the  book  is 
altogether  less  crude  and  less  rude  than  the  papers  from 
which  it  bas  here  been  a  second  time  evolved. 

The  papers,  as  they  appeared  from  month  to  month, 
were  not  the  product  of  those  unities  of  time  and  place 
which  were  the  happy  conditioning  of  My  Literary 
Passions.  They  could  not  have  been  written  in  quite 
so  many  places  as  times,  but  they  enjoyed  a  comparable 
variety  of  origin.  Beginning  in  Boston,  they  were 
continued  in  a  Boston  suburb,  on  the  shores  of  Lake 
George,  in  a  Western  'New  York  health  resort,  in 
Buffalo,  in  Xahant ;  once,  twice,  and  thrice  in  !N^ew 
York,  with  reversions  to  Boston,  and  summer  excur- 
sions to  the  hills  and  waters  of  !N'ew  England,  until 
it  seemed  that  their  author  had  at  last  said  his  say, 
and  he  voluntarily  lapsed  into  silence  with  the  applause 
of  friends  and  enemies  alike. 

The  papers  had  made  him  more  of  the  last  than  of 


BIBLIOGKAPIIICAL 

the  first,  but  not  as  still  appears  to  him  with  greater 
reason.  At  moments  his  deliverances  seemed  to  stir 
people  of  different  minds  to  furj  in  two  continents,  so 
far  as  they  were  English-speaking,  and  on  the  coasts  of 
the  seven  seas ;  and  some  of  these  came  back  at  him 
with  such  violent  personalities  as  it  is  his  satisfaction 
to  remember  that  he  never  indulged  in  his  attacks  upon 
their  theories  of  criticism  and  fiction.  His  opinions 
were  always  impersonal;  and  now  as  their  manner 
rather  than  their  make  has  been  slightly  tempered,  it 
may  surprise  the  belated  reader  to  learn  that  it  was  the 
belief  of  one  English  critic  that  their  author  had 
"  placed  himself  beyond  the  pale  of  decency "  by 
them.  It  ought  to  be  less  surprising  that,  since  these 
dreadful  words  were  written  of  him,  more  than  one 
magnanimous  Englishman  has  penitently  expressed  to 
the  author  the  feeling  that  he  was  not  so  far  wrong  in 
his  overboldly  hazarded  convictions.  The  penitence  of 
his  countrymen  is  still  waiting  expression,  but  it  may 
come  to  that  when  they  have  recurred  to  the  evidences 
of  his  offence  in  their  present  shape. 

KiTTEEY  Point,  Maine,  July,  1909. 


MY  LITERARY  PASSIONS 
CRITICISM  &  FICTION 


MY    LITERARY    PASSIONS 
I 

THE    BOOKCASE    AT    HOME 

To  give  an  account  of  one's  reading  is  in  some  sort 
to  give  an  account  of  one's  life ;  and  I  hope  that  I  shall 
not  offend  those  who  follow  me  in  these  papers,  if  I 
cannot  help  speaking  of  myself  in  speaking  of  the  au- 
thors I  must  call  my  masters :  my  masters  not  because 
they  taught  me  this  or  that  directly,  but  because  I  had 
such  delight  in  them  that  I  could  not  fail  to  teach  myself 
from  them  whatever  I  was  capable  of  learning.  I  do 
not  know  whether  I  have  been  what  people  call  a  great 
reader;  I  cannot  claim  even  to  have  been  a  very 
wise  reader ;  but  I  have  always  been  conscious  of  a  high 
purpose  to  read  much  more,  and  more  discreetly,  than 
I  have  ever  really  done,  and  probably  it  is  from  the 
vantage-ground  of  this  good  intention  that  I  shall  some- 
times be  found  writing  here  rather  than  from  the  facts 
of  the  case. 

But  I  am  pretty  sure  that  I  began  right,  and  that  if 
I  had  always  kept  the  lofty  level  which  I  struck  at  the 
outset  I  should  have  the  right  to  use  authority  in  these 
reminiscences  without  a  bad  conscience.  I  shall  try 
not  to  use  authority,  however,  and  I  do  not  expect  to 
speak  here  of  all  my  reading,  whether  it  has  been  mucli 

3 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

or  little,  but  only  of  tliose  books,  or  .of  those  authors 
that  I  have  felt  a  genuine  passion  for,  I  have  known 
such  passions  at  every  period  of  my  life,  but  it  is 
mainly  of  the  loves  of  my  youth  that  I  shall  write,  and 
I  shall  write  all  the  more  frankly  because  my  own  youth 
now  seems  to  me  rather  more  alien  than  that  of  any 
other  person. 

I  think  that  I  came  of  a  reading  race,  which  has 
always  loved  literature  in  a  way,  and  in.  spite  of  varying 
fortunes  and  many  changes.  From  a  letter  of  my 
great-grandmother's  wa-itten  to  a  stubborn  daughter 
upon  some  uufilial  behavior,  like  running  away  to  be 
married,  I  suspect  that  she  was  fond  of  the  high-colored 
fiction  of  her  day,  for  she  tells  the  wilful  child  that  she 
has  "  planted  a  dagger  in  her  mother's  heart,"  and  I 
should  not  be  surprised  if  it  were  from  this  fine-lan- 
gTiaged  lady  that  my  grandfather  derived  his  taste  for 
poetry  rather  than  from  his  father,  who  was  of  a  worldly 
wiser  mind.  To  be  sure,  he  became  a  Friend  by  Con- 
vincement  as  the  Quakers  say,  and  so  I  cannot  imagine 
that  he  was  altogether  worldly ;  but  he  had  an  eye  to  the 
main  chance:  he  founded  the  industry  of  making  flan- 
nels in  the  little  Welsh  town  where  he  lived,  and  he 
seems  to  have  grown  richer,  for  his  day  and  place,  than 
any  of  us  have  since  grown  for  ours.  My  grandfather, 
indeed,  was  concerned  chiefly  in  getting  away  from  the 
world  and  its  wickedness.  He  came  to  this  country 
early  in  the  nineteenth  century  and  settled  his  family 
in  a  log-cabin  in  the  Ohio  woods,  that  they  might  be 
safe  from  the  sinister  influences  of  the  village  where  he 
was  managing  some  woollen-mills.  But  he  kept  his 
affection  for  certain  poets  of  the  graver,  not  to  say 
gloomier  sort,  and  he  must  have  suffered  his  children 
to  read  them,  pending  that  great  question  of  their 
souls'  salvation  which  was  a  lifelong  trouble  to  him. 

4 


THE   BOOKCASE   AT   HOME 

My  father,  at  any  rate,  had  such  a  decided  bent  in 
the  direction  of  literature,  that  he  was  not  content  in 
any  of  his  several  economical  experiments  till  he  be- 
came the  editor  of  a  newspaper,  which  was  then  the 
sole  means  of  satisfying  a  literary  passion.  His  pa- 
per, at  the  date  when  I  began  to  know  him,  was  a 
living,  comfortable  and  decent,  but  without  the  least 
promise  of  wealth  in  it,  or  the  hope  even  of  a  much 
better  condition.  I  think  now  that  he  was  wise  not 
to  care  for  the  advancement  which  most  of  us  have 
our  hearts  set  upon,  and  that  it  was  one  of  his  finest 
qualities  that  he  was  content  with  a  lot  in  life  where 
he  was  not  exempt  from  work  with  his  hands,  and  yet 
where  he  was  not  so  pressed  by  need  but  he  could 
give  himself  at  will  not  only  to  the  things  of  the  spir- 
it, but  the  things  of  the  mind  too.  After  a  season  of 
scepticism  he  had  become  a  religious  man,  like  the 
rest  of  his  race,  but  in  his  o^vn  fashion,  which  was 
not  at  all  the  fashion  of  my  grandfather :  a  Friend  who 
had  married  out  of  Meeting,  and  had  ended  a  perfer- 
vid  Methodist.  My  father,  who  could  never  get  him- 
self converted  at  any  of  the  camp-meetings  where  my 
grandfather  often  led  the  forces  of  prayer  to  his  sup- 
port, and  had  at  last  to  be  given  up  in  despair,  fell  in 
with  the  writings  of  Emanuel  Swedenborg,  and  em- 
braced the  doctrine  of  that  philosopher  with  a  content 
that  has  lasted  him  all  the  days  of  his  many  years. 
Ever  since  I  can  remember,  the  works  of  Swedenborg 
formed  a  large  part  of  his  library ;  he  read  them  much 
himself,  and  much  to  my  mother,  and  occasionally  a 
"  Memorable  Eolation "  from  them  to  us  children. 
But  he  did  not  force  them  upon  our  notice,  nor  urge 
us  to  read  them,  and  I  think  this  was  very  well.  I 
suppose  his  conscience  and  his  reason  kept  him  from 
doing  so.     But  in  regard  to  other  books,  his  fondness 

5 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

was  too  iiiucli  for  liiin,  and  when  I  began  to  show 
a  liking  for  literature  he  was  eager  to  guide  my 
choice. 

His  own  choice  was  for  poetry,  and  the  most  of 
our  library,  which  was  not  given  to  theology,  was 
given  to  poetry.  I  call  it  the  library  now,  but  then 
we  called  it  the  bookcase,  and  that  was  what  literally 
it  was,  because  I  believe  that  whatever  we  had  called 
our  modest  collection  of  books,  it  was  a  larger  private 
collection  than  any  other  in  the  town  where  we  lived. 
Still  it  Avas  all  held,  and  shut  with  glass  doors,  in  a 
case  of  very  few  shelves.  It  was  not  considerably  en- 
larged during  my  childhood,  for  few  books  came  to 
my  father  as  editor,  and  he  indulged  himself  in  buy- 
ing them  even  more  rarely.  My  grandfather's  book- 
store (it  was  also  the  village  drug-store)  had  then  the 
only  stock  of  literature  for  sale  in  the  place ;  and  once, 
when  Harper  &  Brothers'  agent  came  to  replenish  it, 
he  gave  my  father  several  volumes  for  review.  One 
of  these  was  a  copy  of  Thomson's  Seasons,  a  finely 
illustrated  edition,  whose  pictures  I  knew  long  be- 
fore I  knew  the  poetry,  and  thought  them  the  most 
beautiful  things  that  ever  were.  My  father  read  pas- 
sages of  the  book  aloud,  and  he  w^anted  me  to  read  it 
all  myself.  For  the  matter  of  that  he  wanted  me  to 
read  Co^vper,  from  whom  no  one  could  get  anything 
but  good,  and  he  wanted  me  to  read  Byron,  from 
whom  I  could  then  have  got  no  harm;  we  get  harm 
from  the  evil  Ave  understand.  He  loved  Burns,  too, 
and  he  used  to  read  aloud  from  him,  I  must  own,  to 
my  inexpressible  weariness.  I  could  not  away  with 
that  dialect,  and  I  could  not  then  feel  the  charm  of 
the  poet's  wit,  nor  the  tender  beauty  of  his  pathos. 
Moore,  T  could  manage  better;  and  when  my  father 
read  "  Lalla  Rookh  "  to  my  mother  I  sat  up  to  listen, 

6 


THE   BOOKCASE   AT   HOME 

and  entered  into  all  the  woes  of  Iran  in  the  story  of  the 
"  Fire  Worshippers."  I  drew  the  line  at  the  "  Veiled 
Prophet  of  Khorassan,"  though  I  had  some  sense  of 
the  humor  of  the  poet's  conception  of  the  critic  in 
"  Fadladeen."  But  I  liked  Scott's  poems  far  better, 
and  got  from  Ispahan  to  Edinburgh  wdth  a  glad  alac- 
rity of  fancy.  I  followed  the  "  Lady  of  the  Lake  " 
throughout,  and  wdien  I  first  began  to  contrive  verses 
of  my  own  I  found  that  poem  a  fit  model  in  mood  and 
metre. 

Among  other  volumes  of  verse  on  the  top  shelf  of  the 
bookcase,  of  which  I  used  to  look  at  the  outside  with- 
out penetrating  deeply  within,  were  Pope's  translation 
of  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  and  Dry  den's  Virgil, 
pretty  little  tomes  in  tree-calf,  published  by  James 
Crissy  in  Philadelphia,  and  illustrated  with  small 
copper-plates,  which  somehow  seemed  to  put  the  matter 
hopelessly  beyond  me.  It  was  as  if  they  said  to  me 
in  so  many  words  that  literature  which  furnished  the 
subjects  of  such  pictures  I  could  not  hope  to  under- 
stand, and  need  not  try.  At  any  rate,  I  let  them  alone 
for  the  time,  and  I  did  not  meddle  with  a  volume  of 
Shakespeare,  in  green  cloth  and  cruelly  fine  print, 
which  overawed  me  in  like  manner  with  its  wood-cuts. 
I  cannot  say  just  why  I  conceived  that  there  was 
something  imhallowed  in  the  matter  of  the  book;  per- 
haps this  was  a  tint  from  the  reputation  of  the  rather 
profligate  young  man  from  whom  my  father  had  it. 
If  he  were  not  profligate  I  ask  bis  pardon.  I  have  not 
the  least  notion  who  he  was,  but  that  was  the  notion 
I  had  of  him,  whoever  he  was,  or  wherever  he  now  is. 
There  may  never  have  been  such  a  young  man  at  all ; 
the  impression  I  had  may  have  been  pure  invention 
of  my  own,  like  many  things  with  children,  who  do  not 
very  distinctlv  know  their   dreams   from   their   expe- 

T 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

riences,  and  live  in  the  world  where  hoth  project  the 
same  quality  of  shadow. 

There  were,  of  course,  other  books  in  the  bookcase, 
which  my  consciousness  made  no  account  of,  and  I 
speak  only  of  those  I  remember.  Fiction  there  was 
none  at  all  that  I  can  recall,  except  Poe's  Tales  of  the 
Grotesque  and  the  Arabesque  (I  long  afflicted  myself 
as  to  what  those  words  meant,  when  I  might  easily 
have  asked  and  found  out)  and  Bulwer's  Last  Days  of 
Pompeii,  all  in  the  same  kind  of  binding.  History  is 
known,  to  my  young  remembrance  of  that  library,  by 
a  History  of  the  United  States,  whose  dust  and  ashes 
I  hardly  made  my  way  through;  and  by  a  Chronicle 
of  the  Conquest  of  Granada,  by  the  ever  dear  and 
precious  Fray  Antonio  Agapida,  whom  I  was  long  in 
making  out  to  be  one  and  the  same  as  Washington 
Irving. 

In  school  there  was  as  little  literature  then  as  there 
is  now,  and  I  cannot  say  anything  worse  of  our  school 
reading;  but  I  was  not  really  very  much  in  school, 
and  so  I  got  small  harm  from  it.  The  printing-office 
was  my  school  from  a  very  early  date.  My  father 
thoroughly  believed  in  it,  and  he  had  his  beliefs  as  to 
work,  which  he  illustrated  as  soon  as  we  were  old 
enough  to  learn  the  trade  he  followed.  We  could  go 
to  school  and  study,  or  we  could  go  into  the  printing- 
office  and  work,  with  an  equal  chance  of  learning,  but 
we  could  not  be  idle;  we  must  do  something,  for  our 
souls'  sake,  though  he  was  willing  enough  we  should 
play,  and  he  liked  himself  to  go  into  the  woods  with 
us,  and  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  that  manhood  can  share 
with  childhood.  I  suppose  that  as  the  world  goes  now 
we  were  poor.  His  income  was  never  above  twelve 
hundred  a  year,  and  his  family  was  large ;  but  nobody 
was  rich  there  or  then;  we  lived  in  the  simple  abun- 

8 


THE   BOOKCASE   AT   HOME 

dance  of  that  time  and  place,  and  we  did  not  know 
that  we  were  poor.  As  yet  the  unequal  modern  condi- 
tions were  undreamed  of  (who  indeed  could  have 
dreamed  of  them  forty  or  fifty  years  ago?)  in  the 
little  Southern  Ohio  town  where  nearly  the  whole  of 
my  most  happy  boyhood  was  passed. 


II 

GOLDSMITH 

When  I  began  to  have  literary  likings  of  my  own, 
and  to  love  certain  books  above  others,  the  first  au- 
thors of  my  heart  were  Goldsmith,  Cervantes,  and 
Irving.  In  the  sharply  foreshortened  perspective  of 
the  past  I  seem  to  have  read  them  all  at  once,  but  I 
am  aware  of  an  order  of  time  in  the  pleasure  they 
gave  me,  and  I  know  that  Goldsmith  came  first.  He 
came  so  early  that  I  cannot  tell  when  or  how  I  began 
to  read  him,  but  it  must  have  been  before  I  was  ten 
years  old.  I  read  other  books  about  that  time,  notably 
a  small  book  on  Grecian  and  Roman  mythology,  which 
I  perused  with  such  a  passion  for  those  pagan  gods  and 
goddesses  that,  if  it  had  ever  been  a  question  of  sacri- 
ficing to  Diana,  I  do  not  really  know  whether  I  should 
have  been  able  to  refuse.  I  adored  indiscriminately 
all  the  tribes  of  nymphs  and  naiads,  demigods  and 
heroes,  as  well  as  the  high  ones  of  Olympus ;  and  I  am 
afraid  that  by  day  I  dwelt  in  a  world  peopled  and 
ruled  by  them,  though  I  faithfully  said  my  prayers 
at  night,  and  fell  asleep  in  sorroAv  for  my  sins.  I  do 
not  know  in  the  least  how  Goldsmith's  Greece  came 
into  my  hands,  though  I  fancy  it  must  have  been  pro- 
cured for  me  because  of  a  taste  which  I  showed  for 
that  kind  of  reading,  and  I  can  imagine  no  greater 
luck  for  a  small  boy  in  a  small  town  of  Southwestern 
Ohio  wellnigh  fifty  years  ago.     I  have  the  books  yet; 

10 


GOLDSMITH 

two  little,  stout  volumes  in  fine  print,  with  the  marks 
of  wear  on  them,  but  without  those  dishonorable  blots, 
or  those  other  injuries  which  boys  inflict  upon  books 
in  resentment  of  their  dulness,  or  out  of  mere  wanton- 
ness. I  was  always  sensitive  to  the  maltreatment  of 
books :  I  could  not  bear  to  see  a  book  faced  down  or 
dogs-eared  or  broken-backed.  It  was  like  a  hurt  or  an 
insult  to  a  thing  that  could  feel. 

Goldsmith's  History  of  Rome  came  to  me  much 
later,  but  quite  as  immemorably,  and  after  I  had 
formed  a  preference  for  the  Greek  Kepublics,  which  I 
dare  say  was  not  mistaken.  Of  course  I  liked  Athens 
best,  and  yet  there  was  something  in  the  fine  behavior 
of  the  Spartans  in  battle,  which  won  a  heart  formed 
for  hero-worship.  I  mastered  the  notion  of  their  com- 
munism, and  approved  of  their  iron  money,  with  the 
poverty  it  obliged  them  to,  yet  somehow  their  cruel 
treatment  of  the  Helots  failed  to  shock  me;  perhaps  I 
forgave  it  to  their  patriotism,  as  I  had  to  forgive  many 
ugly  facts  in  the  history  of  the  Romans  to  theirs. 
There  was  hardly  any  sort  of  bloodshed  which  I  would 
not  pardon  in  those  days  to  the  slayers  of  tyrants; 
and  the  swagger  form  of  such  as  despatched  a  despot 
with  a  fine  speech  was  so  much  to  my  liking  that  I 
could  only  grieve  that  I  was  born  too  late  to  do  and  to 
say  those  things. 

I  do  not  think  I  yet  felt  the  beauty  of  the  literature 
which  made  them  all  live  in  my  fancy,  that  I  con- 
ceived of  Goldsmith  as  an  artist  using  for  my  rapture 
the  finest  of  the  arts;  and  yet  I  had  been  taught  to 
see  the  loveliness  of  poetry,  and  was  already  trying  to 
make  it  on  my  own  poor  account.  I  tried  to  make 
verses  like  those  I  listened  to  when  my  father  read 
Moore  and  Scott  to  my  mother,  but  I  heard  them 
with  no  such  happiness  as  I  read  my  beloved  histories, 

11 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

though  I  never  thought  then  of  attempting  to  write 
like  Goldsmith.  I  accepted  his  beautiful  work  as  ig- 
norantly  as  I  did  my  otlier  blessings.  I  was  concerned 
in  getting  at  the  Greeks  and  llomans,  and  I  did  not 
know  through  what  nimble  air  and  by  what  lovely 
ways  I  was  led  to  them.  Some  retrospective  percep- 
tion of  this  came  long  afterward  when  I  read  his 
essays,  and  after  I  knew  all  of  his  poetry,  and  later 
yet  when  I  read  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield;  but  for  the 
present  my  eyes  were  holden,  as  the  eyes  of  a  boy 
mostly  are  in  the  world  of  art.  What  I  wanted  with 
my  Greeks  and  Romans  after  I  got  at  them  was  to 
be  like  tliem,  or  at  least  to  turn  them  to  account  in 
verse,  and  in  dramatic  verse  at  that.  The  Romans 
were  less  civilized  than  the  Greeks,  and  so  were  more 
like  boys,  and  more  to  a  boy's  purpose.  I  did  not  make 
literature  of  the  Greeks,  but  I  got  a  whole  tragedy 
out  of  the  Romans;  it  was  a  rhymed  tragedy,  and  in 
octosyllabic  verse,  like  the  "  Lady  of  the  Lake."  I 
meant  it  to  be  acted  by  my  schoolmates,  but  I  am  not 
sure  that  I  ever  made  it  known  to  them.  Still,  they 
were  not  ignorant  of  my  reading,  and  I  remember 
how  proud  I  was  when  a  certain  boy,  who  had  always 
whipped  me  when  we  fouglit  together,  and  so  outranked 
me  in  that  little  boys'  world,  once  sent  to  ask  me  the 
name  of  the  Roman  emperor  who  lamented  at  night- 
fall, when  he  had  done  nothing  worthy,  that  he  had 
lost  a  day.  The  boy  was  going  to  use  tlie  story  in  a 
composition,  as  we  called  the  school  themes  then,  and 
I  told  him  tlie  emperor's  name;  I  could  not  tell  him 
now  without  turning  to  the  book. 

My  reading  gave  me  no  standing  among  the  boys, 
and  I  did  not  expect  it  to  rank  me  with  boys  who  were 
more  valiant  in  figlit  or  in  play;  and  I  have  since 
found  that  literature  gives  one  no  more  certain  station 

12 


GOLDSMITH 

in  the  world  of  men's  activities,  either  idle  or  useful. 
We  literary  folk  try  to  believe  that  it  does,  but  that 
is  all  nonsense.  At  every  period  of  life,  among  boys 
or  men,  we  are  accepted  when  they  are  at  leisure,  and 
want  to  be  amused,  and  at  best  we  are  tolerated  rather 
than  accepted.  I  must  have  told  the  boys  stories  out 
of  my  Goldsmith's  Greece  and  Rome,  or  it  would  not 
have  been  knovni  that  I  had  read  them,  but  I  have  no 
recollection  now  of  doing  so,  while  I  distinctly  remem- 
ber rehearsing  the  allegories  and  fables  of  the  Gesta 
Romanorum,  a  book  which  seems  to  have  been  in  my 
hands  about  the  same  time  or  a  little  later.  I  had  a 
delight  in  that  stupid  collection  of  monkish  legends 
which  I  cannot  account  for  now,  and  which  persisted 
in  spite  of  the  nightmare  confusion  it  made  of  my 
ancient  Greeks  and  Romans.  They  were  not  at  all 
the  ancient  Greeks  and  Romans  of  Goldsmith's  his- 
tories. 

I  cannot  say  at  what  times  I  read  these  books,  but 
they  must  have  been  odd  times,  for  life  was  very  full 
of  play  then,  and  was  already  beginning  to  be  troubled 
Avith  work.  As  I  have  said,  I  was  to  and  fro  between 
the  school-house  and  the  printing-office  so  much  that 
when  I  tired  of  the  one  I  must  have  been  very 
promptly  given  my  choice  of  the  other.  The  reading, 
however,  somehow  went  on  pretty  constantly,  and  no 
doubt  my  love  for  it  won  me  a  chance  for  it.  There 
were  some  famous  cherry-trees  in  our  yard,  which,  as 
I  look  back  at  them,  seem  to  have  been  in  flower  or 
fruit  the  year  round;  and  in  one  of  them  there  was  a 
level  branch  where  a  boy  could  sit  with  a  book  till  his 
dangling  legs  went  to  sleep,  or  till  some  idler  or 
busier  boy  came  to  the  gate  and  called  him  down  to 
play  marbles  or  go  swimming.  When  this  happened 
the  ancient  world  was  rolled  up  like  a  scroll,  and  put 

13 


MY   LITERARY    PASSIONS 

away  until  the  next  day,  with  all  its  orators  and  con- 
spirators, its  nymphs  and  satyrs,  gods  and  demigods; 
thongh  sometimes  they  escaped  at  night  and  got  into 
the  boy's  dreams. 

I  do  not  think  I  cared  as  much  as  some  of  the  other 
boys  for  the  Arabian  Nights  or  Robinson  Crusoe,  but 
when  it  came  to  the  Ingenious  Gentleman  of  La 
Mancha,  I  was  not  only  first,  I  was  sole. 

Before  I  speak,  however,  of  the  beneficent  humorist 
who  next  had  my  boyish  heart  after  Goldsmith,  let 
me  acquit  myself  in  full  of  my  debt  to  that  not  un- 
equal or  unkindred  spirit.  I  have  said  it  was  long 
after  I  had  read  those  histories,  full  of  his  inalienable 
charm,  mere  pot-boilers  as  they  were,  and  far  beneath 
his  more  willing  efforts,  that  I  came  to  know^  his 
poetry.  My  father  must  have  read  the  "  Deserted 
Village  "  to  us,  and  told  us  something  of  the  author's 
pathetic  life,  for  I  cannot  remember  when  I  first  knew 
of  "  sweet  Auburn,"  or  had  the  light  of  the  poet's  own 
troubled  day  upon  the  "  loveliest  village  of  the  plain." 
The  Vicar  of  Wakefield  must  have  come  into  my  life 
after  that  poem  and  before  The  Traveler.  It  was 
when  I  w^ould  have  said  that  I  knew  all  Goldsmith ; 
we  often  give  ourselves  credit  for  knowledge  in  this 
way  without  having  any  tangible  assets;  and  my  read- 
ing has  always  been  very  desultory.  I  should  like  to 
say  here  that  the  reading  of  any  one  Avho  reads  to 
much  purpose  is  always  very  desultory,  though  perhaps 
I  had  better  not  say  so,  but  merely  state  the  fact  in  my 
case,  and  own  that  I  never  read  any  one  author  quite 
through  without  W'andering  from  him  to  others. 
When  I  first  read  the  Vicar  of  WaJce field  (for  I  have 
since  read  it  several  times,  and  hope  yet  to  read  it 
many  times),  I  found  its  persons  and  incidents  fa- 
miliar, and  so  I  suppose  I  must  have  heard  it  read.    It 

14 


GOLDSMITH 

is  still  for  me  one  of  the  most  modern  novels :  that  is  to 
say,  one  of  the  best.  It  is  unmistakably  good  up  to 
a  certain  point,  and  then  unmistakably  bad,  but  with 
always  good  enough  in  it  to  be  forever  imperishable. 
Kindness  and  gentleness  are  never  out  of  fashion ;  it 
is  these  in  Goldsmith  which  make  him  our  contempo- 
rary, and  it  is  worth  the  while  of  any  young  person 
presently  intending  deathless  renown  to  take  a  little 
thought  of  them.  They  are  the  source  of  all  refine- 
ment, and  I  do  not  believe  that  the  best  art  in  any 
kind  exists  without  them.  The  style  is  the  man,  and 
he  cannot  hide  himself  in  any  garb  of  words  so  that 
we  shall  not  know  somehow  what  manner  of  man  he 
is  within  it ;  his  speech  bewrayeth  him,  not  only  as  to 
his  country  and  his  race,  but  more  subtly  yet  as  to  his 
heart,  and  the  loves  and  hates  of  his  heart.  As  to 
Goldsmith,  I  do  not  think  that  a  man  of  harsh  and 
arrogant  nature,  of  worldly  and  selfish  soul,  could 
ever  have  written  his  style,  and  I  do  not  think  that,  in 
far  greater  measure  than  criticism  has  recognized,  his 
spiritual  quality,  his  essential  friendliness,  expressed 
itself  in  the  literary  beauty  that  wins  the  heart  as  well 
as  takes  the  fancy  in  his  work. 

I  should  have  my  reservations  and  my  animadver- 
sions if  it  came  to  close  criticism  of  his  work,  but  I 
am  glad  that  he  was  the  first  author  I  loved,  and  that 
even  before  I  knew  I  loved  him  I  was  his  devoted 
reader.  I  was  not  consciously  his  admirer  till  I  began 
to  read,  when  I  was  fourteen,  a  little  volume  of  his 
essays,  made  up,  I  dare  say,  from  the  Citizen  of  the 
World  and  other  unsuccessful  ventures  of  his.  It  con- 
tained the  papers  on  Beau  Tibbs,  among  others,  and  I 
tried  to  write  sketches  and  studies  of  life  in  their 
manner.  But  this  attempt  at  Goldsmith's  manner 
followed  a  long  time  after  I  tried  to  write  in  the  style 

15 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

of  Edgar  A.  Foe,  as  I  kuew  it  from  his  Tales  of  the 
Grotesque  and  Arabesque.  I  suppose  the  very  poorest 
of  these  was  the  "  Devil  in  the  Belfry,"  but  such  as  it 
was  I  followed  it  as  closely  as  I  could  in  the  "  Devil  in 
the  Smoke-Pipes  " ;  I  meant  tobacco-pipes.  The  resem- 
blance was  noted  by  those  to  whom  I  read  my  story; 
I  alone  could  not  see  it  or  would  not  own  it,  and  I 
really  felt  it  a  hardship  that  I  should  be  found  to  have 
produced  an  imitation. 

It  was  the  first  time  I  had  imitated  a  prose  writer, 
though  I  had  imitated  several  poets  like  Moore,  Camp- 
bell, and  Goldsmith  himself.  I  have  never  greatly 
loved  an  author  without  wishing  to  write  like  him. 
I  have  now  no  reluctance  to  confess  that,  and  I  do  not 
see  why  I  should  not  say  that  it  was  a  long  time  before 
I  found  it  best  to  be  as  like  myself  as  I  could,  even 
when  I  did  not  think  so  well  of  myself  as  of  some 
others.  I  hope  I  shall  always  be  able  and  willing  to 
learn  something  from  the  masters  of  literature  and 
still  be  myself,  but  for  the  young  writer  this  seems  im- 
possible. He  must  form  himself  from  time  to  time 
upon  the  different  authors  he  is  in  love  with,  but  when 
he  has  done  this  he  must  wish  it  not  to  be  known,  for 
that  is  natural  too.  The  lover  always  desires  to  ignore 
the  object  of  his  passion,  and  the  adoration  which  a 
young  writer  has  for  a  great  one  is  truly  a  passion 
passing  the  love  of  women.  I  think  it  hardly  less 
fortunate  that  Cervantes  was  one  of  my  early  passions, 
though  I  sat  at  his  feet  with  no  more  sense  of  his 
mastery  than  I  had  of  Goldsmith's. 


Ill 

CERVANTES 

I  RECALL  very  fully  the  moment  and  the  place  when 
I  first  heard  of  Don  Quixote,  while  as  yet  I  could  not 
connect  it  very  distinctly  with  anybody's  authorship. 
I  was  still  too  young  to  conceive  of  authorship,  even 
in  my  own  case,  and  wrote  my  miserable  verses  with- 
out any  notion  of  literature,  or  of  anything  but  the 
pleasure  of  seeing  them  actually  come  out  rightly 
rhymed  and  measured.  The  moment  was  at  the  close 
of  a  summer's  day  just  before  supper,  which,  in  our 
house,  we  had  lawlessly  late,  and  the  place  was  the 
kitchen  where  my  mother  was  going  about  her  work, 
and  listening  as  she  could  to  what  my  father  was  tell- 
ing my  brother  and  me  and  an  apprentice  of  ours, 
who  was  like  a  brother  to  us  both,  of  a  book  that  he 
had  once  read.  We  boys  were  all  shelling  peas,  but 
the  story,  as  it  went  on,  rapt  us  from  the  poor  em- 
ploy, and  whatever  our  fingers  were  doing,  our  spirits 
were  away  in  that  strange  land  of  adventures  and  mis- 
haps, where  the  fevered  life  of  the  knight  truly  with- 
out fear  and  without  reproach  burned  itself  out.  I 
dare  say  that  my  father  tried  to  make  us  understand 
the  satirical  purpose  of  the  book.  I  vaguely  remember 
his  speaking  of  the  books  of  chivalry  it  was  meant  to 
ridicule;  but  a  boy  could  not  care  for  this,  and  what 
I  longed  to  do  at  once  was  to  get  that  book  and  plunge 
into  its  story.     He  told  us  at  random  of  the  attack 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

on  the  windmills  and  the  flocks  of  sheep,  of  the  night 
in  the  valley  of  the  fulling-mills  with  their  trip- 
hammers, of  the  inn  and  the  muleteers,  of  the  tossing 
of  Sancho  in  the  blanket,  of  the  island  that  was  given 
him  to  govern,  and  of  all  the  merry  pranks  at  the 
duke's  and  duchess's,  of  the  liberation  of  the  galley- 
slaves,  of  the  capture  of  Mambrino's  helmet,  and  of 
Sancho's  invention  of  the  enchanted  Dulcinea,  and 
whatever  else  there  was  wonderful  and  delightful  in 
the  most  wonderful  and  delightful  book  in  the  world. 
I  do  not  know  when  or  where  my  father  got  it  for  me, 
and  I  am  aware  of  an  appreciable  time  that  passed  be- 
tween my  hearing  of  it  and  my  having  it.  The  event 
must  have  been  most  important  to  me,  and  it  is  strange 
I  cannot  fix  the  moment  when  the  precious  story  came 
into  my  hands ;  though  for  the  matter  of  that  there  is 
nothing  more  capricious  than  a  child's  memory,  what 
it  will  hold  and  what  it  will  lose. 

It  is  certain  my  Don  Quixote  was  in  two  small,  stout 
volumes  not  much  bigger  each  than  my  Goldsmith's 
Greece,  bound  in  a  sort  of  law-calf,  Avell  fitted  to  with- 
stand the  wear  they  were  destined  to  undergo.  The 
translation  was,  of  course,  the  old-fashioned  version  of 
Jervas,  which,  whether  it  was  a  closely  faithful  version 
or  not,  was  honest  eighteenth-century  English,  and 
reported  faithfully  enough  the  spirit  of  the  original. 
If  it  had  any  literary  influence  with  me  the  influence 
must  have  been  good.  But  I  cannot  make  out  that  I 
was  sensible  of  the  literature;  it  was  the  forever  en- 
chanting story  that  I  enjoyed.  I  exulted  in  the  bound- 
less freedom  of  the  design;  the  open  air  of  that  im- 
mense scene,  where  adventure  followed  adventure  with 
the  natural  sequence  of  life,  and  the  days  and  the  nights 
were  not  long  enougli  for  the  events  that  thronged 
them,  amidst  the  fields  and  woods,  the  streams   and 

IS 


CERVANTES 

hills,  the  highways  and  byways,  hostelries  and  hovels, 
prisons  and  palaces,  which  were  the  setting  of  that 
matchless  history.  I  took  it  as  simply  as  I  took  every- 
thing else  in  the  world  about  me.  It  was  full  of  mean- 
ing that  I  could  not  grasp,  and  there  were  significances 
of  the  kind  that  literature  unhappily  abounds  in,  but 
they  were  lost  upon  my  innocence.  I  did  not  know 
whether  it  was  well  written  or  not;  I  never  thought 
about  that ;  it  was  simply  there  in  its  vast  entirety,  its 
inexhaustible  opulence,  and  I  was  rich  in  it  beyond  the 
dreams  of  avarice. 

My  father  must  have  told  us  that  night  about  Cer- 
vantes as  well  as  about  his  Don  Quixote,  for  I  seem 
to  have  knoAvn  from  the  beginning  that  he  was  once  a 
slave  in  Algiers,  and  that  he  had  lost  a  hand  in  battle, 
and  I  loved  him  with  a  sort  of  personal  affection,  as 
if  he  were  still  living  and  he  could  somehow  return 
my  love.  His  name  and  nature  endeared  the  Spanish 
name  and  nature  to  me,  so  that  they  were  always  my 
romance,  and  to  this  day  I  cannot  meet  a  Spanish  man 
without  clothing  him  in  something  of  the  honor  and 
worship  I  lavished  upon  Cervantes  when  I  was  a  child. 
While  I  was  in  the  full  flush  of  this  ardor  there  came 
to  see  our  school,  one  day,  a  Mexican  gentleman  who 
was  studying  the  American  system  of  education ;  a 
mild,  fat,  saffron  man,  whom  I  could  almost  have 
died  to  please  for  Cervantes'  and  Don  Quixote's  sake, 
because  I  knew  he  spoke  their  tongue.  But  he  smiled 
upon  us  all,  and  I  had  no  chance  to  distinguish  myself 
from  the  rest  hy  any  act  of  devotion  before  the  blessed 
vision  faded,  though  for  long  afterwards,  in  impas- 
sioned reveries,  I  accosted  him  and  claimed  him  kin- 
dred because  of  my  fealty,  and  because  I  would  have 
been  Spanish  if  I  could. 

I  would  not  have  had  the  boy-world  about  me  know 

19 


MY   LITEKARY   PASSIONS 

an^-tliing  of  these  fond  dreams ;  l)ut  it  was  mj  tastes 
alone,  my  passions,  which  were  alien  there;  in  every- 
thing else  I  was  as  much  a  citizen  as  any  boy  who  had 
never  heard  of  Don  Quixote.  But  I  believe  that  I 
carried  the  book  about  with  me  most  of  the  time,  so 
as  not  to  lose  any  chance  moment  of  reading  it.  Even 
in  the  blank  of  certain  years,  when  I  added  little  other 
reading  to  my  store,  I  must  still  have  been  reading  it. 
This  was  after  we  had  removed  from  the  town  where 
the  earlier  years  of  my  boyhood  were  passed,  and  I 
had  barely  adjusted  myself  to  the  strange  environ- 
ment when  one  of  my  imcles  asked  me  to  come  with 
him  and  learn  the  drug  business,  in  the  place,  forty 
miles  away,  where  he  practised  medicine.  We  made 
the  long  journey,  longer  than  any  I  have  made  since, 
in  the  stage-coach  of  those  days,  and  we  arrived  at 
his  house  about  twilight,  he  glad  to  get  home,  and  I 
sick  to  death  with  yearning  for  the  home  I  had  left. 
I  do  not  know  how  it  was  that  in  this  state,  when  all 
the  world  was  one  hopeless  blackness  around  me,  I 
should  have  got  my  Don  Quixote  out  of  my  bag;  I 
seem  to  have  had  it  with  me  as  an  essential  part  of 
my  equipment  for  my  new  career.  Perhaps  I  had 
been  asked  to  show  it,  with  the  notion  of  beguiling  me 
from  my  misery;  perhaps  I  was  myself  trying  to 
drown  my  sorrows  in  it.  But  anyhow  I  have  before 
me  now  the  vision  of  my  sweet  young  aunt  and  her 
young  sister  looking  over  her  shoulder,  as  they  stood 
together  on  the  lawn  in  the  summer  evening  light. 
My  aunt  held  my  Do7i  Quixote  open  in  one  hand,  while 
she  clasped  with  the  other  the  child  she  carried  on 
her  arm.  She  looked  at  the  book,  and  then  from  time 
to  time  she  looked  at  me,  very  kindly  but  very  curi- 
ously, with  a  faint  smile,  so  that  as  I  stood  there, 
inwardly  writhing  in  my  bashfulness,  I  had  the  sense 

20 


CERVANTES 

that  in  her  eyes  I  was  a  queer  boy.  She  returned  the 
book  without  comment,  after  some  questions,  and  I 
took  it  off  to  my  room,  where  the  confidential  friend 
of  Cervantes  cried  himself  to  sleep. 

In  the  morning  I  rose  up  and  told  them  I  could  not 
stand  it,  and  I  was  going  home.  ]^otliing  they  could 
say  availed,  and  my  uncle  went  down  to  the  stage- 
office  with  me  and  took  my  passage  back. 

The  horror  of  cholera  was  then  in  the  land ;  and  we 
heard  in  the  stage-office  that  a  man  lay  dead  of  it  in 
the  hotel  overhead.  But  my  uncle  led  me  to  his  drug- 
store, where  the  stage  was  to  call  for  me,  and  made 
me  taste  a  little  camphor;  with  this  prophylactic,  Cer- 
vantes and  I  somehow  got  home  together  alive. 

The  reading  of  Don  Quixote  went  on  throughout 
my  boyhood,  so  that  I  cannot  recall  any  distinctive 
period  of  it  when  I  was  not,  more  or  less,  reading  that 
book.  In  a  boy's  way  I  knew  it  well  when  I  was  ten, 
and  a  few  years  ago,  when  I  was  fifty,  I  took  it  up  in 
the  admirable  new  version  of  Ormsby,  and  found  it  so 
full  of  myself  and  of  my  own  irrevocable  past  that  I 
did  not  find  it  very  gay.  But  I  made  a  great  many 
discoveries  in  it;  things  I  had  not  dreamt  of  were 
there,  and  must  always  have  been  there,  and  other 
things  wore  a  new  face,  and  made  a  new  effect  upon 
me.  I  had  my  doubts,  my  reserves,  where  once  I  had 
given  it  my  whole  heart  without  question,  and  yet  in 
what  formed  the  greatness  of  the  book  it  seemed  to 
me  greater  than  ever.  I  believe  that  its  free  and  sim- 
ple design,  where  event  follows  event  without  the 
fettering  control  of  intrigue,  but  where  all  grows  nat- 
urally out  of  character  and  conditions,  is  the  supreme 
form  of  fiction;  and  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  if  we 
ever  have  a  great  American  novel  it  must  be  built 
upon  some  such  large  and  noble  lines.    As  for  the  cen- 

21 


MY  LITERARY   PASSIONS 

tral  figure,  Don  Quixote  himself,  in  his  dignity  and 
generosity,  his  unselfish  ideals,  and  his  fearless  devo- 
tion to  them,  he  is  always  heroic  and  beautiful ;  and  I 
was  glad  to  find  in  my  latest  look  at  his  history  that 
I  had  truly  conceived  of  him  at  first,  and  had  felt  the 
sublimity  of  his  nature.  I  did  not  want  to  laugh  at 
him  so  much,  and  I  could  not  laugh  at  all  any  more 
at  some  of  the  things  done  to  him.  Once  they  seemed 
funny,  but  now  only  cruel,  and  even  stupid,  so  that  it 
was  strange  to  realize  his  qualities  and  indignities  as 
both  flowing  from  the  same  mind.  But  in  my  mature 
experience,  which  threw  a  broader  light  on  the  fable, 
I  was  happy  to  keep  my  old  love  of  an  author  who 
had  been  almost  personally  dear  to  me. 


IV 

IRVING 

I  HAVE  told  boAv  Cervantes  made  his  race  precious 
to  me,  and  I  am  sure  that  it  must  have  been  he  who 
fitted  me  to  miderstand  and  enjoy  the  American  anthor 
who  now  stayed  me  on  Spanish  gronnd  and  kept  me 
happy  in  Spanish  air,  though  I  cannot  trace  the  tie  in 
time  and  circnmstance  between  Irving  and  Cervantes. 
The  most  I  can  make  snre  of  is  that  I  read  the  Con- 
quest of  Granada  after  I  read  Don  Quixote,  and  that 
I  loved  the  historian  so  much  because  I  had  loved  the 
novelist  much  more.  Of  course  I  did  not  perceive 
then  that  Irving's  charm  came  largely  from  Cervantes 
and  the  other  Spanish  humorists  yet  unknown  to  me, 
and  that  he  had  formed  himself  upon  them  almost  as 
much  as  upon  Goldsmith,  but  I  dare  say  that  this  fact 
had  insensibly  a  great  deal  to  do  with  my  liking. 
Afterwards  I  came  to  see  it,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
see  what  was  Irving's  own  in  Irving ;  to  feel  his  native, 
if  somewhat  attenuated  humor,  and  his  original,  if 
somewhat  too  studied  grace.  But  as  yet  there  was 
no  critical  question  \vitli  me.  I  gave  my  heart  simply 
and  passionately  to  the  author  who  made  the  scenes 
of  that  most  pathetic  history  live  in  my  sympathy,  and 
companioned  me  with  the  stately  and  gracious  actors 
in  them. 

I  really  cannot  say  now  whether  I  loved  the  Moors  or 
the  Spaniards  more.     I  fought  on  both  sides ;  I  would 

23 


MY   LITERARY  PASSIONS 

not  have  had  the  Spaniards  beaten,  and  yet  when  the 
Moors  lost  I  was  vanquished  with  them ;  and  when  the 
poor  young  King  Boabdil  (I  was  his  devoted  partisan 
and  at  the  same  time  a  follower  of  his  fiery  old  uncle 
and  rival,  liamet  el  Zegri)  heaved  the  Last  Sigli  of  the 
Moor,  as  his  eyes  left  the  roofs  of  Granada  forever, 
it  was  as  much  my  grief  as  if  it  had  burst  from  my 
o-wTi  breast.  I  put  both  these  princes  into  the  first 
and  last  historical  romance  I  ever  wrote.  I  have  now 
no  idea  what  they  did  in  it,  but  as  the  story  never 
came  to  a  conclusion  it  does  not  greatly  matter.  I 
had  never  yet  read  an  historical  :^'omance  that  I 
can  make  sure  of,  and  probably  my  attempt  must 
have  been  based  almost  solely  upon  the  facts  of 
Irving's  history.  I  am  certain  I  could  not  have 
thought  of  adding  anything  to  them,  or  at  all 
varying  them. 

In  reading  his  Chronicle  I  suffered  for  a  time  from 
its  attribution  to  Fray  Antonio  Agapida,  the  pious 
monk  whom  he  feigns  to  have  written  it,  just  as  in 
reading  Don  Quixote  I  suffered  from  Cervantes  mas- 
querading as  the  Moorish  scribe,  Cid  Hamet  Ben  En- 
geli.  My  father  explained  the  literary  caprice,  but  it 
remained  a  confusion  and  a  trouble  for  me,  and  I 
made  a  practice  of  skipping  those  passages  where 
either  author  insisted  upon  his  invention.  I  will  own 
that  I  am  rather  glad  that  sort  of  thing  seems  to  be 
out  of  fashion  now,  and  I  think  the  director  and  franker 
methods  of  modern  fiction  will  forbid  its  revival. 
Thackeray  was  fond  cf  such  open  disguises,  and  liked 
to  greet  his  reader  from  the  mask  of  Yellowplush  and 
Michael  Angelo  Titmarsh,  but  it  seems  to  me  this  was 
in  his  least  modern  moments. 

My  Conquest  of  Granada  was  in  two  octavo  vol- 
umes, bound  in  drab  boards,  and  printed  on  paper  very 

24 


IRVING 

much  yellowed  with  time  at  its  irregular  edges.  I  do 
not  know  when  the  books  happened  in  my  hands.  I 
have  no  remembrance  that  they  were  in  any  wise  of- 
fered or  commended  to  me,  and  in  a  sort  of  way  they 
were  as  authentically  mine  as  if  I  had  made  them.  I 
saw  them  at  home,  not  many  months  ago,  in  my  fa- 
ther's library  (it  has  long  outgrown  the  old  bookcase, 
which  has  gone  I  know  not  where),  and  upon  the 
whole  I  rather  shrank  from  taking  them  down,  much 
more  from  opening  them,  though  I  could  not  say 
why,  unless  it  was  from  the  fear  of  perhaps  find- 
ing the  ghost  of  my  boyish  self  within,  pressed  flat 
like  a  withered  leaf,  somewhere  between  the  familiar 
pages. 

When  I  learned  Spanish  it  was  with  the  purpose, 
never  yet  fulfilled,  of  writing  the  life  of  Cervantes,  al- 
though I  have  since  had  some  forty-odd  years  to  do  it 
in.  I  taught  myself  the  language,  or  began  to  do  so, 
when  I  knew  nothing  of  the  English  grammar  but  the 
prosody  at  the  end  of  the  book.  My  father  had  the 
contempt  of  familiarity  with  it,  having  himself  written 
a  very  brief  sketch  of  our  accidence,  and  he  seems  to 
have  let  me  plunge  into  the  sea  of  Spanish  verbs  and 
adverbs,  nouns  and  pronouns,  and  all  the  rest,  when 
as  yet  I  could  not  confidently  call  them  by  name,  with 
the  serene  belief  that  if  I  did  not  swim  I  would  still 
somehow  get  ashore  without  sinking.  The  end,  per- 
haps, justified  him,  and  I  suppose  I  did  not  do  all 
that  work  without  getting  some  strength  from  it;  but 
I  wish  I  had  back  the  time  that  it  cost  me;  I  should 
like  to  waste  it  in  some  other  way.  However,  time 
seemed  interminable  then,  and  I  thought  there  would 
be  enough  of  it  for  me  in  which  to  read  all  Spanish 
literature;  or,  at  least,  I  did  not  propose  to  do  any- 
thing less. 

9r; 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

I  followed  Irving,  too,  iu  my  later  reading,  but  at 
haphazard,  and  with  other  authors  at  the  same  time.  I 
did  my  poor  best  to  be  amused  by  his  Knickerbocker 
History  of  New  York,  because  my  father  liked  it  so 
much,  but  secretly  I  found  it  heavy;  and  a  few  years 
ago  when  I  went  carefully  tlirough  it  again  I  could 
not  laugh.  Even  as  a  boy  I  found  some  other  things 
of  his  uphill  work.  There  was  the  beautiful  manner, 
but  the  thought  seemed  thin ;  and  I  do  not  remember 
having  been  much  amused  by  Bracehridge  Hall, 
though  I  read  it  devoutly,  and  with  a  full  sense  that 
it  would  be  very  comme  il  faut  to  like  it.  But  I  did 
like  the  Life  of  Goldsmith;  I  liked  it  a  great  deal  bet- 
ter than  the  more  authoritative  Life  by  Forster,  and  I 
think  there  is  a  deeper  and  sweeter  sense  of  Goldsmith 
in  it.  Better  than  all,  except  the  Conquest  of  Grana- 
da, I  liked  the  Legend  vf  Sleepy  Hollow  and  the  story 
of  Rip  Van  Winkle,  with  their  humorous  and  affec- 
tionate caricatures  of  life  that  w^as  once  of  our  own 
soil  and  air;  and  the  Tales  of  the  Alhamhra,  which 
transported  me  again  to  the  scenes  of  my  youth  beside 
the  Xenil.  It  was  long  after  my  acquaintance  with 
his  work  that  I  came  to  a  due  sense  of  Irving  as  an 
artist,  and  perhaps  I  have  come  to  feel  a  full  sense  of 
it  only  now,  when  I  perceive  that  he  worked  willingly 
only  when  he  worked  inventively.  At  last  I  can  do 
justice  to  the  exquisite  conception  of  his  Conquest  of 
Granada,  a  study  of  history  which,  in  unique  measure, 
conveys  not  only  the  pathos,  but  the  humor  of  one  of 
the  most  splendid  and  impressive  situations  in  the  ex- 
perience of  the  race.  Very  possibly  something  of  the 
severer  truth  might  have  been  sacrificed  to  the  effect 
of  the  pleasing  and  touching  tale,  but  I  do  not  under- 
stand that  this  was  really  done.  Upon  the  whole  I 
am  very  well  content  with  my  first  three  loves  in  liter- 

26" 


IRVING 

ature,  and  if  I  were  to  choose  for  any  other  boy  I  do 
not  see  how  I  could  choose  better  than  Goldsmith  and 
Cervantes  and  Irving,  kindred  spirits,  and  each  not 
a  master  only,  but  a  sweet  and  gentle  friend,  whose 
kindness  could  not  fail  to  profit  him. 


V 

FIRST  FICTION  AND  DRA]\IA 

In  my  omti  case  there  followed  my  acquaintance 
with  these  authors  certain  Boeotian  years,  when  if  I  did 
not  go  backward  I  scarcely  went  forward  in  the  paths 
I  had  set  out  upon.  They  were  years  of  the  work,  of 
the  over-work,  indeed,  which  falls  to  the  lot  of  so  many 
that  I  should  be  ashamed  to  speak  of  it  except  in 
accounting  for  the  fact.  My  father  had  sold  his  paper 
in  Hamilton  and  had  bought  an  interest  in  another  at 
Dayton,  and  we  were  all  straining  our  utmost  to  help 
pay  for  it.  My  daily  tasks  began  so  early  and  ended 
so  late  that  I  had  little  time,  even  if  I  had  the  spirit, 
for  reading;  and  it  was  not  till  what  we  thought  ruin, 
but  what  was  really  release,  came  to  us  that  I  got 
back  again  to  my  books.  Then  we  went  to  live  in  the 
country  for  a  year,  and  that  stress  of  toil,  with  the 
shadow  of  failure  darkening  all,  fell  from  me  like 
the  horror  of  an  evil  dream.  The  only  new  book 
which  I  remember  to  have  read  in  those  two  or  three 
years  at  Dayton,  when  I  hardly  remember  to  have  read 
any  old  ones,  was  the  novel  of  Jane  Eyre,  which  I  took 
in  very  imperfectly,  and  which  I  associate  with  the 
first  rumor  of  the  Rochester  Knockings,  then  just  be- 
ginning to  reverberate  through  a  world  that  they  have 
not  since  left  wholly  at  peace.  It  was  a  gloomy  Sunday 
afternoon  when  the  book  came  under  my  hand;  and 
mixed  with  my  interest  in  the  story  was  an  anxiety  lest 

28 


FIKST   FICTION    AND   DKAMA 

the  pictures  on  the  walls  should  leave  their  nails  and 
come  and  lay  themselves  at  my  feet ;  that  was  what  the 
pictures  had  been  doing  in  Rochester  and  other  places 
where  the  disembodied  spirits  were  beginning  to  make 
themselves  felt.  The  thing  did  not  really  happen  in 
my  case,  but  I  was  alone  in  the  house,  and  it  might  very 
easily  have  happened. 

If  very  little  came  to  me  in  those  days  from  books, 
on  the  other  hand  my  acquaintance  with  the  drama 
vastly  enlarged  itself.  There  was  a  hapless  company 
of  players  in  the  town  from  time  to  time,  and  they 
came  to  us  for  their  printing.  I  believe  they  never 
paid  for  it,  or  at  least  never  wholly,  but  they  lavished 
free  passes  upon  us,  and  as  nearly  as  I  can  make  out, 
at  this  distance  of  time,  I  profited  by  their  generosity, 
every  night.  They  gave  two  or  three  plays  at  every 
performance  to  houses  ungratefully  small,  but  of  a 
lively  spirit  and  impatient  temper  that  would  not  brook 
delay  in  the  representation;  and  they  changed  the  bill 
each  day.  In  this  way  I  became  familiar  with  Shake- 
speare before  I  read  him,  or  at  least  such  plays  of  his 
as  were  most  given  in  those  days,  and  I  saw  "  Macbeth  " 
and  "Hamlet,"  and  above  all  "Eichard  III.," again  and 
again.  I  do  not  know  why  my  delight  in  those  tragedies 
did  not  send  me  to  the  volume  of  his  plays,  which  was 
all  the  time  in  the  bookcase  at  home,  but  I  seem  not  to 
have  thought  of  it,  and  rapt  as  I  was  in  them  I  am  not 
sure  that  they  gave  me  greater  pleasure,  or  seemed  at 
all  finer,  than  "  Rollo,"  "  The  Wife,"  "  The  Stranger," 
"  Barbarossa,"  "  The  Miser  of  Marseilles,"  and  the  rest 
of  the  melodramas,  comedies,  and  farces  which  I  saw  at 
that  time.  I  have  a  notion  that  there  were  some  clever 
people  in  one  of  these  companies,  and  that  the  lighter 
pieces  at  least  were  well  played,  but  I  may  be  altogether 
wrong.  The  gentleman  who  took  the  part  of  villain, 
3  29 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

with  an  unfailing  lovo  of  evil,  in  the  different  dramas, 
used  to  come  about  the  printing-office  a  good  deal,  and  I 
was  puzzled  to  find  him  a  very  mild  and  gentle  person. 
To  be  sure  he  had  a  mustache,  which  in  those  days 
devoted  a  man  to  wickedness,  but  by  day  it  was  a  blond 
mustache,  quite  flaxen,  in  fact,  and  not  at  all  the  dark 
and  deadly  thing  it  was  behind  the  footlights  at  night. 
I  could  scarcely  gasp  in  his  presence,  my  heart  bounded 
so  in  awe  and  honor  of  him  when  he  paid  a  visit  to  us ; 
perhaps  he  used  to  bring  the  copy  of  the  show-bills.  The 
company  he  belonged  to  left  town  in  the  adversity 
habitual  wath  them. 

Our  own  adversity  had  been  growing,  and  now  it  be- 
came overwhelming.  We  had  to  give  up  the  paper  we 
had  struggled  so  hard  to  keep,  but  when  the  worst  came 
it  was  not  half  so  bad  as  what  had  gone  before.  There 
was  no  more  waiting  till  midnight  for  the  telegraphic 
news,  no  more  waking  at  dawn  to  deliver  the  papers,  no 
more  weary  days  at  the  case,  heavier  for  the  doom  hang- 
ing over  us.  My  father  and  his  brothers  had  long 
dreamed  of  a  sort  of  family  colony  somewhere  in  the 
country,  and  now  the  imcle  who  was  most  prosperous 
bought  a  milling  property  on  a  river  not  far  from  Day- 
ton, and  my  father  went  out  to  take  charge  of  it  until  the 
others  could  shape  their  business  to  follow  him.  The 
scheme  came  to  nothing  finally,  but  in  the  mean  time 
we  escaped  from  the  little  city  and  its  sorrow^ful  associa- 
tions of  fruitless  labor,  and  had  a  year  in  the  country, 
which  was  blest,  at  least  to  us  children,  by  sojourn  in  a 
log-cabin,  while  a  house  was  building  for  us. 


VI 

LONGFELLOW'S   "SPANISH   STUDENT" 

This  log-cabin  had  a  loft,  where  we  boys  slept,  and 
in  the  loft  were  stored  in  barrels  the  books  that  had 
now  begun  to  overflow  the  bookcase.  I  do  not  know 
why  I  chose  the  loft  to  renew  my  long-neglected  friend- 
ship with  them.  The  light  could  not  have  been  good, 
though  if  I  brought  my  books  to  the  little  gable  window 
that  overlooked  the  groaning  and  whistling  gristmill 
I  could  see  well  enough.  But  perhaps  I  liked  the  loft 
best  because  the  books  were  handiest  there,  and  because 
I  could  be  alone.  At  any  rate,  it  was  there  that  I  read 
Longfellow's  "  Spanish  Student,"  which  I  found  in  an 
old  paper  copy  of  his  poems  in  one  of  the  barrels,  and  I 
instantly  conceived  for  it  the  passion  which  all  things 
Spanish  inspired  in  me.  As  I  read  I  not  only  renewed 
my  acquaintance  with  literature,  but  renewed  my  de- 
light in  people  and  places  where  I  had  been  happy  be- 
fore those  heavy  years  in  Dayton.  At  the  same  time  I 
felt  a  little  jealousy,  a  little  grudge,  that  any  one  else 
should  love  them  as  well  as  T,  and  if  the  poem  had  not 
been  so  beautiful  I  should  have  hated  the  poet  for  tres- 
passing on  my  ground.  But  I  could  not  hold  out  long 
against  the  witchery  of  his  verse.  The  "  Spanish  Stu- 
dent "  became  one  of  my  passions ;  a  minor  passion,  not 
a  grand  one,  like  Don  Quixote  and  the  Conquest  of 
Granada,  but  still  a  passion,  and  I  should  dread  a  little 
to  read  the  piece  now,  lest  I  should  disturb  my  old  ideal 

31 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

of  its  biaiity.  The  hero's  rogue  servant,  Chispa,  seemed 
to  me,  then  and  long  afterwards,  so  fine  a  bit  of  Spanish 
character  that  I  chose  his  name  for  my  first  pseudonym 
when  I  began  to  write  for  the  newspapers,  and  signed 
my  legislative  correspondence  for  a  Cincinnati  paper 
with  it.  I  was  in  love  with  the  heroine,  the  lovely 
dancer  whose  cachucha  turned  my  head,  along  with  that 
of  the  cardinal,  but  whose  name  even  I  have  forgotten, 
and  I  went  about  with  the  thought  of  her  burning  in 
my  heart,  as  if  she  had  been  a  real  person. 


VII 

SCOTT 

All  the  while  I  was  bringing  up  the  long  arrears  of 
play  which  I  had  not  enjoyed  in  the  toil-years  at  Day- 
ton, and  was  trying  to  make  my  Spanish  reading  serve 
in  the  sports  that  we  had  in  the  woods  and  by  the  river. 
We  were  Moors  and  Spaniards  almost  as  often  as  we 
were  British  and  Americans,  or  settlers  and  Indians. 
I  suspect  that  the  large,  mild  boy,  the  son  of  a  neigh- 
boring farmer,  who  mainly  shared  our  games,  had  but 
a  dim  notion  of  what  I  meant  by  my  strange  people, 
but  I  did  my  best  to  enlighten  him,  and  he  helped  me 
make  a  dream  out  of  my  life,  and  did  his  best  to  dwell 
in  the  region  of  unrealities  where  I  preferably  had  my 
being;  he  was  from  time  to  time  a  Moor  when  I  think 
he  would  rather  have  been  a  Mingo. 

I  got  hold  of  Scott's  poems,  too,  in  that  cabin  loft, 
and  read  most  of  the  tales  which  were  yet  unknown  to 
me  after  those  earlier  readings  of  my  father's.  I  could 
not  say  why  "  Harold  the  Dauntless  "  most  took  my 
fancy;  the  fine,  strongly  flowing  rhythm  of  the  verse 
had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  it,  I  believe.  I  liked  these 
things,  all  of  them,  and  in  after  years  I  liked  the  "  Lady 
of  the  Lake  "  more  and  more,  and  from  mere  love  of  it 
got  great  lengths  of  it  by  heart;  but  I  cannot  say  that 
Scott  was  then  or  ever  a  great  passion  with  me.  It 
was  a  sobered  affection  at  best,  which  came  from  my 
sympathy  with  his  love  of  nature,  and  the  whole  kindly 

r>3 


MY   LITEFARY   PASSIONS 

and  humane  keeping  of  his  genius.  Many  years  later, 
during  the  month  when  I  was  waiting  for  my  passport 
as  Consul  for  Venice,  and  had  the  time  on  my  hands, 
I  passed  it  chiefly  in  reading  all  his  novels,  one  after 
another,  without  the  interruption  of  other  reading. 
IvanJioe  I  had  known  before,  and  the  Bride  of  Lnmmer- 
moor  and  Woodstock,  but  the  rest  had  remained  in  that 
sort  of  abeyance  which  is  often  the  fate  of  books  people 
expect  to  read  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  come  very  near 
not  reading  at  all,  or  read  only  very  late.  Taking  them 
in  this  swift  sequence,  little  or  nothing  of  them  remained 
with  me,  and  my  experience  with  them  is  against  that 
sort  of  ordered  and  regular  reading,  which  I  have  so 
often  heard  advised  for  young  people  by  their  elders.  I 
always  suspect  their  elders  of  not  having  done  that  kind 
of  reading  themselves. 

For  my  own  part  I  believe  I  have  never  got  any 
good  from  a  book  that  I  did  not  read  lawlessly  and 
wilfully,  out  of  all  leading  and  following,  and  merely 
because  I  wanted  to  read  it;  and  I  here  make  bold  to 
praise  that  way  of  doing.  The  book  which  you  read 
from  a  sense  of  duty,  or  because  for  any  reason  you 
must,  does  not  commonly  make  friends  with  you.  It 
may  happen  that  it  will  yield  you  an  unexpected  de- 
light, but  this  will  be  in  its  own  unentreated  way  and 
in  spite  of  your  good  intentions.  Little  of  the  book  read 
for  a  purpose  stays  with  the  reader,  and  this  is  one 
reason  why  reading  for  review  is  so  vain  and  unprofit- 
able. I  have  done  a  vast  deal  of  this,  but  I  have  usu- 
ally been  aware  that  the  book  was  subtly  withholding 
from  mo  the  best  a  book  can  give,  since  I  was  not  read- 
ing it  for  its  own  sako  and  because  T  loved  it,  but  for 
selfish  ends  of  my  own,  and  because  T  wished  to  possess 
myself  of  it  for  business  purposes,  as  it  were.  The 
reading  that  does  one  good,  and  lasting  good,  is  the 

34 


SCOTT 

n-aJiiig  that  one  docs  for  pleasure,  and  simply  and  un- 
selfishlj,  as  children  do.  Art  will  still  withhold  herself 
from  thrift,  and  she  docs  well,  for  nothing  but  love  has 
any  right  to  her. 

Little  remains  of  the  events  of  any  period,  however 
vivid  they  were  in  passing.  The  memory  may  hold 
record  of  everything,  as  it  is  believed,  but  it  will  not 
be  easily  entreated  to  give  up  its  facts,  and  I  find  my- 
self striving  in  vain  to  recall  the  things  that  I  must 
have  read  that  year  in  the  country.  Probably  I  read 
the  old  things  over;  certainly  I  kept  on  with  Cervan- 
tes, and  very  likely  with  Goldsmith.  There  was  a 
delightful  history  of  Ohio,  stuffed  with  tales  of  the 
pioneer  times,  which  was  a  good  deal  in  the  hands  of 
us  boys ;  and  there  was  a  book  of  Western  Adventure, 
full  of  Indian  fights  and  captivities,  which  we  wore  to 
pieces.  Still,  I  think  that  it  was  now  that  I  began  to 
have  a  literary  sense  of  what  I  was  reading.  I  wrote 
a  diary,  and  I  tried  to  give  its  record  form  and  style, 
but  mostly  failed.  The  versifying  which  I  was  always 
at  was  easier,  and  yielded  itself  more  to  my  hand.  I 
should  be  very  glad  to  know  at  present  what  it  dealt 
with. 


VIII 

LIGHTER  FANCIES 

When  my  uncles  changed  their  minds  in  regard  to 
colonizing  their  families  at  the  mills,  as  they  did  in 
ahout  a  year,  it  became  necessary  for  my  father  to 
look  about  for  some  new  employment,  and  he  naturally 
looked  in  the  old  direction.  There  were  several 
schemes  for  getting  hold  of  this  paper  and  that,  and 
there  were  offers  that  came  to  nothing.  In  that  day 
there  were  few  salaried  editors  in  the  country  outside 
of  New  York,  and  the  only  hope  we  coiild  have  was 
of  some  place  as  printers  in  an  office  which  we  might 
finally  buy.  The  affair  ended  in  our  going  to  the 
State  capital,  where  my  father  found  work  as  a  report- 
er of  legislative  proceedings  for  one  of  the  daily  jour- 
nals, and  I  was  taken  into  the  office  as  a  compositor. 
In  this  way  I  came  into  living  contact  with  literature 
again,  and  the  day-dreams  began  once  more  over  the 
familiar  cases  of  type.  A  definite  literary  ambition 
grew  up  in  me,  and  in  the  long  reveries  of  the  after- 
noon, when  I  was  distributing  my  case,  I  fashioned  a 
future  of  overpowering  magnificence  and  undying  ce- 
lebrity. I  should  be  ashamed  to  say  what  literary 
triumphs  I  achieved  in  those  preposterous  deliriums. 
What  I  actually  did  was  to  write  a  good  many  copies 
of  verse,  in  imitation,  never  owned,  of  Moore  and 
Goldsmith,  and  some  minor  poets,  whose  work  caught 

36 


LIGHTER   FANCIES 

my  fauc}',  as  I  read  it  in  tlic  newspapers  or  put  it 
iuto  type. 

One  of  my  pieces,  which  fell  so  far  short  of  my 
visionary  performances  as  to  treat  of  the  lowly  and 
familiar  theme  of  Spring,  was  the  first  thing  I  ever 
had  in  print.  IMy  father  offered  it  to  the  editor  of 
the  paper  I  worked  on,  and  I  first  knew,  with  mingled 
shame  and  pride,  of  what  he  had  done  when  I  saw  it 
in  the  journal.  In  the  tnmult  of  my  emotions  I  prom- 
ised myself  that  if  I  got  through  this  experience  safely 
I  w^ould  never  suffer  anything  else  of  mine  to  be  pub- 
lished ;  but  it  was  not  long  before  I  offered  the  editor 
a  poem  myself.  I  am  now  glad  to  think  it  dealt  with 
so  humble  a  fact  as  a  farmer's  family  leaving  their  old 
home  for  the  West,  The  only  fame  of  my  poem  which 
reached  me  was  when  another  boy  in  the  office  quoted 
some  lines  of  it  in  derision.  This  covered  me  with  such 
confusion  that  I  wonder  that  I  did  not  vanish  from  the 
earth.  At  the  same  time  I  had  my  secret  joy  in  it,  and 
even  yet  I  think  it  was  attempted  in  a  way  which  was 
not  false  or  wrong.  I  had  tried  to  sketch  an  aspect  of 
life  that  I  had  seen  and  known,  and  that  was  very  well 
indeed,  and  I  had  w^'ought  patiently  and  carefully  in 
the  art  of  the  poor  little  affair. 

My  elder  brother,  for  whom  there  was  no  place  in 
the  office  where  I  worked,  had  found  one  in  a  store, 
and  he  beguiled  the  leisure  that  light  trade  left  on 
his  hands  by  reading  the  novels  of  Captain  Marryat. 
I  read  them  after  him  with  a  great  deal  of  amusement, 
but  without  the  passion  that  I  bestowed  upon  my 
favorite  authors.  I  believe  I  had  no  critical  reserves 
in  regard  to  them,  but  simply  they  did  not  take  my 
fancy.  Still,  w^e  had  great  fun  w^ith  Japliet  in  Search 
of  a  Father,  and  with  Midshipman  Easy,  and  we  felt 
a  fine  physical  shiver  in  the  darkling  moods  of  Snarle- 

37 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

yow  the  Dog-Fiend.  1  do  not  remember  even  the 
names  of  the  other  novels,  except  Jacob  Faithful,  which 
I  chanced  npon  a  few  years  ago  and  found  very  hard 
reading. 

We  children  wlio  were  used  to  the  free  range  of 
woods  and  fields  were  homesick  for  the  country  in  our 
narrow  city  yard,  and  I  associate  with  this  longing  the 
Farmer's  Boy  of  Bloomfield,  which  my  father  got  for 
me.  It  was  a  little  book  in  blue  cloth,  and  there  were 
some  mild  wood-cuts  in  it.  I  read  it  with  a  tempered 
pleasure,  and  with  a  vague  resentment  of  its  trespass 
upon  Thomson's  ground  in  the  division  of  its  parts 
under  the  names  of  the  seasons.  I  do  not  know  why 
I  need  have  felt  this.  I  was  not  yet  very  fond  of 
Thomson.  I  really  liked  Bloomfield  better;  for  one 
thing,  his  poem  was  written  in  the  heroic  decasyllabics 
which  I  preferred  to  any  other  verse. 


IX 

POPE 

I  INFER  from  the  fact  of  this  preference  that  I  had 
already  begun  to  read  Pope,  and  that  I  must  have  read 
the  "  Deserted  Village  "  of  Goldsmith.  I  fancy,  also, 
that  I  must  by  this  time  have  read  the  Odyssey,  for 
the  "  Battle  of  the  Frogs  and  Mice  "  was  in  the  second 
volume,  and  it  took  me  so  much  that  I  paid  it  the 
tribute  of  a  bald  imitation  in  a  mock-heroic  epic  of  a 
cat  fight,  studied  from  the  cat  fights  in  our  back  yard, 
with  the  wonted  invocation  to  the  Muse,  and  the  ma- 
chinery of  partisan  gods  and  goddesses.  It  was  in 
some  hundreds  of  verses,  which  I  did  my  best  to  bal- 
ance as  Pope  did,  with  a  ca?sura  falling  in  the  middle 
of  the  line,  and  a  neat  antithesis  at  the  end. 

The  story  of  the  Odyssey  charmed  me,  of  course, 
and  I  had  moments  of  being  intimate  friends  with 
Ulysses,  but  I  was  passing  out  of  that  phase,  and  was 
coming  to  read  more  with  a  sense  of  the  author,  and 
less  with  a  sense  of  his  characters  as  real  persons ;  that 
is,  I  was  growing  more  literary,  and  less  human.  I 
fell  in  love  with  Pope,  whose  life  I  read  with  an  ardor 
of  sympathy  which  I  am  afraid  he  hardly  merited.  I 
was  of  his  side  in  all  his  quarrels,  as  far  as  I  under- 
stood them,  and  if  I  did  not  understand  them  I  was 
of  his  side  anyway.  When  I  found  that  he  was  a  Cath- 
olic I  was  almost  ready  to  abjure  the  Protestant  religion 
for  his  sake;  but  I  perceived  that  this  was  not  neces- 

39 


MY   LITEJIARY   PASSIONS 

sarj  when  I  came  to  know  tliat  most  of  his  friends 
were  Protestants.  If  the  truth  must  be  told,  I  did  not 
like  his  best  things  at  first,  but  long  remained  chiefly 
attached  to  his  rubbishing  pastorals,  which  I  was  per- 
petually imitating,  with  a  whole  apparatus  of  swains 
and  shepherdesses,  purling  brooks,  enamelled  meads, 
rolling  years,  and  the  like. 

After  my  day's  work  at  the  case  I  wore  the  evening 
away  in  my  boyish  literary  attempts,  forcing  my  poor 
invention  in  that  unnatural  kind,  and  rubbing  and 
polishing  at  my  wretched  verses  till  they  did  sometimes 
take  on  an  effect,  which,  if  it  was  not  like  Pope's,  was 
like  none  of  mine.  With  all  my  pains  I  do  not  think 
I  ev^er  managed  to  bring  any  of  my  pastorals  to  a  satis- 
factory close.  They  all  stopped  somewhere  about  half- 
w^ay.  My  swains  could  not  think  of  anything  more  to 
say,  and  the  merits  of  my  shepherdesses  remained  un- 
decided. To  this  day  I  do  not  know  whether  in  any 
given  instance  it  was  the  champion  of  Chloe  or  of 
Sylvia  that  carried  off  the  prize  for  his  fair,  but  I  dare 
say  it  does  not  much  matter.  I  am  sure  that  I  pro- 
duced a  rhetoric  as  artificial  and  treated  of  things  as 
unreal  as  my  master  in  the  art,  and  I  am  rather  glad 
that  I  acquainted  myself  so  thoroughly  with  a  mood 
of  literature  which,  whatever  we  may  say  against  it, 
seems  to  have  expressed  very  perfectly  a  mood  of  civ- 
ilization. 

The  severe  schooling  I  gave  myself  was  not  without 
its  immediate  use.  I  learned  how  to  choose  between 
words  after  a  study  of  their  fitness,  and  though  I  often 
employed  them  decoratively  and  with  no  vital  sense  of 
their  qualities,  still  in  mere  decoration  they  had  to  be 
chosen  intelligently,  and  after  some  thought  about  their 
structure  and  meaning.  I  could  not  imitate  Pope  with- 
out imitating  his  methods,  and  his  method  was  to  the 

40 


POPE 

last,  degree  intelligent.  Tic  certainly  knew  what  lie 
was  doing,  and  althoiigh  I  did  not  always  know  what  1 
was  doing,  he  made  me  wish  to  know,  and  ashamed  of 
not  knowing.  "T'licre  arc  several  truer  poets  who  might 
not  have  done  this;  and  after  all  the  modern  contempt 
of  Pope,  he  seems  to  me  to  have  heen  at  least  one  of  the 
great  masters,  if  not  one  of  the  great  poets.  The  poor 
man's  life  was  as  weak  and  crooked  as  his  frail,  tor- 
mented hody,  bnt  he  had  a  danntless  spirit,  and  he 
fought  his  way  against  odds  that  might  well  have  appall- 
ed a  stronger  nature.  I  suppose  I  must  own  that  he 
was  from  time  to  time  a  snob,  and  from  time  to  time  a 
liar,  but  I  believe  that  he  loved  the  truth,  and  would 
have  liked  always  to  respect  himself  if  he  could.  He 
violently  revolted,  now  and  again,  from  the  abasement 
to  which  he  forced  himself,  and  he  always  bit  the  heel 
that  trod  on  him,  especially  if  it  was  a  very  high,  narrow 
heel,  with  a  clocked  stocking  and  a  hooped  skirt  above 
it.  I  loved  him  fondly  at  one  time,  and  afterwards  de- 
spised him,  but  now  I  am  not  sorry  for  the  love,  and  I 
am  very  sorry  for  the  despite.  I  humbly  own  a  vast 
debt  to  him,  not  the  least  part  of  which  is  the  perception 
that  he  is  a  model  of  ever  so  much  more  to  be  shunned 
than  to  be  followed  in  literature. 

He  was  the  first  of  the  writers  of  great  Anna's  time 
whom  I  knew,  and  he  made  me  ready  to  understand,  if 
he  did  not  make  me  understand  at  once,  the  order  of 
mind  and  life  which  he  belonged  to.  Thanks  to  his 
pastorals,  I  could  long  afterw^ards  enjoy  with  the  double 
sense  requisite  for  full  pleasure  in  them,  such  divinely 
excellent  artificialities  at  Tasso's  "  Aminta  "  and  Gua- 
rini's  "  Pastor  Fido " ;  things  which  you  will  thor- 
oughly like  only  after  you  are  in  the  joke  of  thinking 
how  people  once  seriously  liked  them  as  high  examples 
of  poetry. 

41 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

Of  course  I  read  other  things  of  Pope's  besides  his 
pastorals,  even  at  the  time  I  read  these  so  much.  I 
read,  or  not  very  easily  or  willingly  read  at,  his  Essay 
on  Man,  which  my  father  admired,  and  which  he 
probably  put  Pope's  works  into  my  hands  to  have  me 
read ;  and  I  read  the  Dunciad,  with  quite  a  furious 
ardor  in  the  tiresome  quarrels  it  celebrates,  and  an  in- 
terest in  its  machinery,  which  it  fatigues  me  to  think  of. 
But  it  was  only  a  few  years  ago  that  I  read  the  Rape 
of  the  Loch,  a  thing  perfect  of  its  kind,  whatever  we 
may  choose  «to  think  of  the  kind.  Upon  the  whole  I 
think  much  better  of  the  kind  than  I  once  did,  though 
still  not  so  much  as  I  should  have  thought  if  I  had 
read  the  poem  when  the  fever  of  my  love  for  Pope  was 
at  the  highest. 

It  is  a  nice  question  how  far  one  is  helped  or  hurt 
by  one's  idealizations  of  historical  or  imaginary  char- 
acters, and  I  shall  not  try  to  answer  it  fully.  I  sup- 
pose that  if  I  once  cherislied  such  a  passion  for  Pope 
personally  that  I  would  willingly  have  done  the  things 
that  he  did,  and  told  the  lies,  and  vented  the  malice, 
and  inflicted  the  cruelties  that  the  poor  soul  was  full 
of,  it  was  for  the  reason,  partly,  that  I  did  not  see 
these  things  as  they  were,  and  that  in  the  glamour  of 
his  talent  I  was  blind  to  all  but  the  virtues  of  his  de- 
fects, which  he  certainly  had,  and  partly  that  in  my 
love  of  him  I  could  not  take  sides  against  him,  even 
when  I  knew  him  to  be  wrong.  After  all,  I  fancy  not 
much  harm  comes  to  the  devoted  boy  from  his  enthu- 
siasms for  this  imperfect  hero  or  that.  In  my  own 
case  I  am  sure  that  I  distinguished  as  to  certain  sins 
in  my  idols.  I  could  not  cast  them  down  or  cease  to 
worship  them,  but  some  of  their  frailties  grieved  me 
and  put  me  to  secret  shame  for  them.  I  did  not  ex- 
cuse these  things  in  them,  or  try  to  believe  that  they 

42 


POPE 

were  less  evil  for  tliem  than  tlicy  would  have  been  for 
less  people.  This  was  after  I  came  more  or  less  to 
the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil.  While  I  remained 
in  the  innocence  of  childhood  I  did  not  even  under- 
stand the  wrong.  When  I  realized  what  lives  some 
of  my  poets  had  led,  how  they  were  drunkards,  and 
SAvindlers,  and  unchaste,  and  untrue,  I  lamented  over 
them  w^ith  a  sense  of  personal  disgrace  in  them,  and 
to  this  day  I  have  no  patience  with  that  code  of  the 
world  which  relaxes  itself  in  behalf  of  the  brilliant  and 
gifted  offender;  rather  he  should  suffer  more  blame. 
The  worst  of  the  literature  of  past  times,  before  an 
ethical  conscience  began  to  inform  it,  or  the  advance 
of  the  race  compelled  it  to  decency,  is  that  it  leaves 
the  mind  foul  with  tilthy  images  and  base  thoughts; 
but  what  I  have  been  trying  to  say  is  that  the  boy, 
unless  he  is  exceptionally  depraved  beforehand,  is 
saved  from  these  through  his  ignorance.  Still  I  wish 
they  were  not  there,  and  I  hope  the  time  will  come 
when  the  beast-man  will  be  so  far  subdued  and  tamed 
in  us  that  the  memory  of  him  in  literature  shall  be  left 
to  perish;  that  what  is  lewd  and  ribald  in  the  great 
poets  shall  be  kept  out  of  such  editions  as  are  meant 
for  general  reading,  and  that  the  pedant-pride  which 
now  perpetuates  it  as  an  essential  part  of  those  poets 
shall  no  longer  have  its  way.  At  the  end  of  the  ends 
such  things  do  defile,  they  do  corrupt.  We  may  pal- 
liate them  or  excuse  them  for  this  reason  or  that,  but 
that  is  the  truth,  and  I  do  not  see  why  they  should 
not  be  dropped  from  literature,  as  they  were  long  ago 
dropped  from  the  talk  of  decent  people.  The  literary 
histories  might  keep  record  of  them,  but  it  is  loath- 
some to  think  of  those  heaps  of  ordure,  accumulated 
from  generation  to  generation,  and  carefully  passed 
down  from  age  to  age  as  something  precious  and  vital, 

43 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

and  not  justly  regarded  as  the  moral  offal  which  they 
are. 

During  the  winter  we  passed  at  Columbus  I  suppose 
that  my  father  read  things  aloud  to  us  after  his  old 
habit,  and  that  I  listened  with  the  rest.  I  have  a  dim 
notion  of  first  knowing  Thomson's  Castle  of  Indolence 
in  this  way,  but  I  was  getting  more  and  more  imj^a- 
tient  of  having  things  read  to  me.  The  trouble  was 
that  I  caught  some  thought  or  image  from  the  text, 
and  that  my  fancy  remained  playing  with  that  while 
the  reading  went  on,  and  I  lost  the  rest.  But  I  think 
the  reading  was  less  in  every  way  than  it  had  been, 
because  his  work  was  exhausting  and  his  leisure  less. 
My  own  hours  in  the  printing-office  began  at  seven  and 
ended  at  six,  with  an  hour  at  noon  for  dinner,  which  I 
often  used  for  putting  down  such  verses  as  had  come  to 
me  during  the  morning.  As  soon  as  supper  was  over 
at  night  I  got  out  my  manuscripts,  which  I  kept  in 
great  disorder,  and  written  in  several  different  hands 
on  several  different  kinds  of  paper,  and  sawed,  and  filed, 
and  hammered  away  at  my  blessed  Popean  heroics  till 
nine,  when  I  went  regularly  to  bed,  to  rise  again  at  five. 
Sometimes  the  foreman  gave  me  an  afternoon  off  on 
Saturdays,  and  though  the  days  were  long  the  work  was 
not  always  constant,  and  was  never  very  severe.  I  sus- 
pect now  the  office  was  not  so  prosperous  as  might  have 
been  Avished.  I  was  shifted  from  place  to  place  in  it, 
and  there  was  plenty  of  time  for  my  day-dreams  over  the 
distribution  of  my  ease.  I  was  very  fond  of  my  work, 
thongh,  and  proud  of  my  swiftness  and  skill  in  it.  Once 
when  the  perplexed  foreman  could  not  think  of  any 
task  to  set  me  he  offered  me  a  holiday,  but  T  would  not 
take  it,  so  I  fancy  that  at  tliis  time  I  was  not  more  inter- 
ested in  my  art  of  poetry  than  in  my  trade  of  printing. 
What  went  on  in  the  office  interested  me  as  much  as  the 

44 


POPE 

quarrels  of  the  Augustan  age  of  English  letters,  and  I 
made  uiuoli  more  record  of  it  in  the  crude  and  shape- 
less diary  which  T  kept,  partly  in  verse  and  partly  in 
prose,  but  always  of  a  distinctly  lower  literary  kind 
than  that  I  was  trying  otherwise  to  write. 

There  must  have  been  some  mention  in  it  of  the 
tremendous  combat  with  wet  sponges  I  saw  there  one 
day  between  two  of  the  boys  who  hurled  them  back 
and  forth  at  each  other.  This  amiable  fray,  carried 
on  during  the  foreman's  absence,  forced  upon  my  no- 
tice for  the  first  time  the  boy  who  has  come  to  be  a 
name  well-known  in  literature.  I  admired  his  vigor 
as  a  combatant,  but  I  never  spoke  to  him  at  that  time, 
and  I  never  dreamed  that  he,  too,  was  effervescing 
Avith  verse,  probably  as  fiercely  as  myself.  Six  or 
seven  years  later  we  met  again,  when  we  had  both 
become  journalists,  and  had  both  had  poems  accepted 
by  Mr.  LowtII  for  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  then  we 
formed  a  literary  friendship  which  eventuated  in  the 
joint  publication  of  a  volume  of  verse.  The  Poems  of 
Two  Friends  became  instantly  and  lastingly  unknown 
to  fame;  the  West  waited,  as  it  always  does,  to  hear 
what  the  East  should  say;  the  East  said  nothing,  and 
two-thirds  of  the  small  edition  of  five  hundred  came 
back  upon  the  publisher's  hands.  I  imagine  these 
copies  were  "•  ground  up  "  in  the  manner  of  worthless 
stock,  for  I  saw  a  single  example  of  the  book  quoted 
the  other  day  in  a  book-seller's  catalogue  at  ten  dollars, 
and  I  infer  that  it  is  so  rare  as  to  be  prized  at  least 
for  its  rarity.  It  was  a  very  pretty  little  book,  printed 
on  tinted  paper  then  called  ''  blush,"  in  the  trade,  and 
it  was  manufactured  in  the  same  office  where  we  had 
once  been  boys  together,  unknown  to  each  other.  An- 
other boy  of  that  time  had  by  this  time  become  fore- 
man in  the  office,  and  he  w'as  very  severe  with  us 
4  45 


MY  litehary  passions 

about  the  proofs,  and  sent  us  hurting  messages  on  the 
margin.  Perhaps  he  thought  we  might  be  going  to 
take  on  airs,  and  perhaps  we  might  have  taken  on  airs 
if  the  fate  of  our  book  had  been  diiferent.  As  it  was 
I  really  think  we  behaved  with  nufficient  meekness,  and 
after  thirty  four  or  five  years  for  reflection  I  am 
still  of  a  very  modest  mind  about  my  share  of  the 
book,  in  spite  of  the  price  it  bears  in  the  book-seller's 
catalogue.  But  I  have  steadily  grown  in  liking  for  my 
friend's  share  in  it,  and  I  think  that  there  is  at  present 
no  American  of  twenty-three  writing  verse  of  so  good 
a  quality,  with  an  ideal  so  pure  and  high,  and  from  an 
impulse  so  authentic  as  John  J.  Piatt's  were  then.  He 
already  knew  how  to  breathe  into  his  glowing  rhyme 
the  very  spirit  of  the  region  w^here  we  were  both  na- 
tive, and  in  him  the  ]\Iiddle  West  has  its  true  poet, 
who  was  much  more  than  its  poet,  who  had  a  rich  and 
tender  imagination,  a  lovely  sense  of  color,  and  a  touch 
even  then  securely  and  fully  his  own.  I  was  reading 
over  his  poems  in  that  poor  little  book  a  few  days  ago, 
and  wondering  wnth  shame  and  contrition  that  I  had 
not  at  once  known  their  incomparable  superiority  to 
mine.  But  I  used  then  and  for  long  afterwards  to  tax 
him  with  obscurity,  not  knowing  that  my  own  want  of 
simplicity  and  directness  was  to  blame  for  that  effect. 

My  reading  from  the  first  was  such  as  to  enamour 
me  of  clearness,  of  definiteness ;  anything  Vft  in  the 
vague  Avas  intolerable  to  me;  but  my  long  subjection 
to  Pope,  while  it  was  useful  in  other  ways,  made  me 
so  strictly  literary  in  my  point  of  view  that  sometimes 
I  could  not  see  wdiat  was,  if  more  naturally  approached 
and  without  any  technical  preoccupation,  perfectly 
transparent.  It  remained  for  another  great  passion, 
perhaps  the  greatest  of  my  life,  to  fuse  these  gyves  in 
which  I  was  trying  so  hard  to  dance,  and  free  me  for- 

46 


POPE 

ever  from  the  bonds  which  I  had  spent  so  much  time 
and  trouble  to  involve  myself  in.  But  I  was  not  to 
know  that  passion  for  five  or  six  years  yet,  and  in  the 
mean  time  I  kept  on  as  I  had  been  going,  and  worked 
out  my  deliverance  in  the  predestined  way.  What  I 
liked  then  was  regularity,  uniformity,  exactness.  I 
did  not  conceive  of  literature  as  the  expression  of  life, 
and  I  could  not  imagine  that  it  ought  to  be  desultory, 
mutable,  and  unfixed,  even  if  at  the  risk  of  some  vague- 
ness. 


X 

VARIOUS  PREFERENCES 

My  father  was  very  fond  of  Bjron,  and  I  must  bo- 
fore  this  have  known  that  his  poems  were  in  our  book- 
case. While  we  were  still  in  Columbus  I  began  to  read 
them,  but  I  did  not  read  so  much  of  them  as  could  have 
helped  me  to  a  truer  and  freer  ideal.  I  read  "  English 
Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,"  and  I  liked  its  vulgar 
music  and  its  heavy-handed  sarcasm.  These  would, 
perhaps,  have  fascinated  any  boy,  but  I  had  such  a 
fanaticism  for  methodical  verse  that  any  variation  from 
the  octosyllabic  and  decasyllabic  couplets  was  painful  to 
me.  The  Spencerian  stanza,  with  its  rich  variety 
of  movement  and  its  harmonious  closes,  long  shut 
"  Childe  Harold  "  from  me,  and  whenever  I  found  a 
poem  in  any  book  which  did  not  rhyme  its  second  line 
with  its  first  I  read  it  unwillingly  or  not  at  all. 

This  craze  could  not  last,  of  course,  but  it  lasted 
beyond  our  stay  in  Columbus,  which  ended  with  the 
winter,  when  the  Legislature  adjourned,  and  my  fa- 
ther's employment  ceased.  He  tried  to  find  some  edi- 
torial work  on  the  paper  which  had  printed  his  reports, 
but  every  place  was  full,  and  it  was  hopeless  to  dream 
of  getting  a  proprietary  interest  in  it.  We  had  noth- 
ing, and  we  must  seek  a  chance  where  something  be- 
sides money  would  avail  us.  This  ofi'ered  itself  in 
the  village  of  Ashtabula,  in  the  northeastern  part  of 
the  State,  and  there  we  all  found  ourselves  one  moon- 

48 


VARIOUS   PKEFEKENCES 

light  night  of  early  summer.  The  Lake  Shore  Railroad 
then  ended  at  Ashtabula,  in  a  bank  of  sand,  and  my 
elder  brother  and  I  walked  up  from  the  station,  while 
the  rest  of  the  family,  which  pretty  well  filled  the 
omnibus,  rode.  We  had  been  very  happy  at  Colum- 
bus, as  Ave  were  apt  to  be  anywhere,  but  none  of  us 
liked  the  narrowness  of  city  streets,  even  so  near  to 
the  woods  as  those  were,  and  we  were  eager  for  the 
country  again.  We  had  always  lived  hitherto  in  large 
towns,  except  for  that  year  at  the  Mills,  and  we  w^ero 
eager  to  see  what  a  village  was  like,  especially  a  village 
peopled  wholly  by  Yankees,  as  our  father  had  reported 
it.  I  must  own  that  we  found  it  far  prettier  than 
anything  we  had  known  in  Southern  Ohio,  which  we 
were  so  fond  of  and  so  loath  to  leave,  and  as  I  look 
back  it  still  seems  to  me  one  of  the  prettiest  little 
places  I  have  ever  known,  with  its  white  wooden 
houses,  glimmering  in  the  dark  of  its  elms  and  maples, 
and  their  silent  gardens  beside  each,  and  the  silent, 
grass-bordered,  sandy  streets  between  them.  The  ho- 
tel, where  we  rejoined  our  family,  lurked  behind  a 
group  of  lofty  elms,  and  we  drank  at  the  toA\Ti  pump 
before  it  just  for  the  pleasure  of  pumping  it. 

The  village  was  all  that  we  could  have  imagined  of 
simply  and  sweetly  romantic  in  the  moonlight,  and 
when  the  day  came  it  did  not  rob  it  of  its  charm.  It 
was  as  lovely  in  my  eyes  as  the  loveliest  village  of  the 
plain,  and  it  had  the  advantage  of  realizing  the  De- 
serted Village  without  being  deserted. 


XI 

UNCLE  TOM'S  CABIN 

The  book  that  moved  mc  most,  in  our  stay  of  six 
months  at  Ashtabula,  was  then  beginning  to  move  the 
whole  world  more  than  any  other  book  has  moved  it. 
I  read  it  as  it  came  out  week  after  week  in  the  old 
National  Era,  and  I  broke  my  heart  over  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,  as  every  one  else  did.  Yet  I  cannot  say  that 
it  was  a  passion  of  mine  like  Don  Quixote,  or  the 
other  books  that  I  had  loved  intensely.  I  felt  its 
greatness  when  I  read  it  first,  and  as  often  as  I  have 
read  it  since,  I  have  seen  more  and  more  clearly  that 
it  was  a  very  great  novel.  With  certain  obvious  lapses 
in  its  art,  and  Avith  an  art  that  is  at  its  best  very  sim- 
ple, and  perhaps  primitive,  the  book  is  still  a  work  of 
art.  I  knew  this,  in  a  measure  then,  as  I  know  it 
now,  and  yet  neither  the  literary  pride  I  was  beginning 
to  have  in  the  perception  of  such  things,  nor  the 
powerful  appeal  it  made  to  my  sympathies,  sufficed  to 
impassion  me  of  it.  I  could  not  say  why  this  was  so. 
Why  does  the  }■  oung  man's  fancy,  when  it  lightly  turns 
to  thoughts  of  love,  turn  this  way  and  not  that  ?  There 
seems  no  more  reason  for  one  than  for  the  other. 

Instead  of  remaining  steeped  to  the  lips  in  the  strong 
interest  of  what  is  still  perhaps  our  chief  fiction,  I  shed 
my  tribute  of  tears,  and  went  on  my  way.  I  did 
not  try  to  write  a  story  of  slavery,  as  I  might  very 
well  have  done;  I  did  not  imitate  either  the  make  or 

50 


UNCLE   TOM'S   CABIN 

the  manner  of  Mrs.  Stowe's  romance;  I  kept  on  at 
my  imitation  of  Pope's  pastorals,  which  I  dare  say  I 
thought  much  finer,  and  worthier  the  powers  of  such 
a  poet  as  I  meant  to  be.  I  did  this,  as  I  must  have 
felt  then,  at  some  personal  risk  of  a  supernatural  kind, 
for  my  studies  were  apt  to  be  prolonged  into  the 
night  after  the  rest  of  the  family  had  gone  to  bed,  and 
a  certain  ghost,  which  I  had  every  reason  to  fear, 
might  very  well  have  visited  the  small  room  given  me 
to  write  in.  There  was  a  story,  which  I  shrank  from 
verifying,  that  a  former  inmate  of  our  house  had  hung 
himself  in  it,  but  I  do  not  know  to  this  day  whether  it 
was  true  or  not.  The  doubt  did  not  prevent  him  from 
dangling  at  the  door-post,  in  my  consciousness,  and 
many  a  time  I  shunned  the  sight  of  this  problematical 
suicide  by  keeping  my  eyes  fastened  on  the  book  be- 
fore me.  It  was  a  very  simple  device,  but  perfectly 
effective,  as  I  think  any  one  will  find  who  employs 
it  in  like  circumstances ;  and  I  would  really  like 
to  commend  it  to  growing  boys  troubled  as  I  was 
then. 

I  never  heard  who  the  poor  soul  was,  or  why  he 
took  himself  out  of  the  world,  if  he  really  did  so,  or 
if  he  ever  was  in  it ;  but  I  am  sure  that  my  passion  for 
Pope,  and  my  purpose  of  writing  pastorals,  must  have 
been  powerful  indeed  to  carry  me  through  dangers  of 
that  kind.  I  suspect  that  the  strongest  proof  of  their 
existence  was  the  gloomy  and  ruinous  look  of  the 
house,  which  was  one  of  the  oldest  in  the  village,  and 
the  only  one  that  was  for  rent  there.  We  went  into 
it  because  we  must,  and  we  were  to  leave  it  as  soon 
as  we  could  find  a  better.  But  before  this  happened 
we  left  Ashtabula,  and  I  parted  with  one  of  the  few 
possibilities  I  have  enjoyed  of  seeing  a  ghost  on  his 
own  ground,  as  it  were. 

51 


:^rY  tjteeary  passions 

I  was  not  sorrv,  for  I  believe  I  never  went  in  or 
came  out  of  the  place,  by  day  or  by  night,  without  a 
slmddor,  more  or  less  secret ;  and  at  least,  now,  wo 
shonld  be  able  to  get  another  house. 


XII 

OSSIAN 

Very  likely  tlie  reading  of  Ossian  had  something 
to  do  with  my  morbid  anxieties.  T  liad  read  Byron's 
imitation  of  him  before  that,  and  admired  it  prodig- 
iously, and  when  my  father  got  me  the  book — as  usual 
I  did  not  know  where  or  how  he  got  it — not  all  the 
tall  forms  that  moved  before  the  eyes  of  haunted 
bards  in  the  dusky  vale  of  autumn  could  have  kept  me 
from  it.  There  were  certain  outline  illustrations  in  it, 
which  were  very  good  in  the  cold  Flaxman  manner, 
and  helped  largely  to  heighten  the  fascination  of  the 
poems  for  me.  They  did  not  supplant  the  pastorals 
of  Pope  in  my  aifections,  and  they  were  never  the 
grand  passion  with  me  that  Pope's  poems  had  been. 

I  began  at  once  to  make  my  imitations  of  Ossian, 
and  I  dare  say  they  were  not  windier  and  mistier  than 
the  original.  At  the  same  time  I  read  the  literature 
of  the  subject,  and  gave  the  pretensions  of  Macpher- 
son  an  unquestioning  faith.  I  should  have  made  very 
short  work  of  any  one  who  had  impugned  the  authen- 
ticity of  the  poems,  but  happily  there  was  no  one  who 
held  the  contrary  opinion  in  that  village,  so  far  as  I 
knew,  or  who  cared  for  Ossian,  or  had  even  heard  of 
him.  This  saved  me  a  great  deal  of  heated  contro- 
versy with  my  contemporaries,  but  I  had  it  out  in 
many  angry  reveries  with  Dr.  Johnson  and  others, 
who  had  dared  to  say  in  their  time  that  the  poems  of 
Ossian  were  not  genuine  lays  of  the  Gaelic  bard,  handed 

53 


ilY   LITEFARY   PASSIONS 

do^vn  from  father  to  son,  and  taken  from  the  lips  of  old 
M'omcn  in  ITigliland  lints,  as  Maepliersou  claimed. 

In  fact  I  lived  over  in  my  small  way  the  epoch  of 
the  eighteenth  century  in  which  these  curious  frauds 
found  i'>olite  acceptance  all  over  Europe,  and  I  think 
3'et  that  they  were  really  worthier  of  acceptance  than 
most  of  the  artificialities  that  then  passed  for  poetry. 
There  was  a  light  of  nature  in  them,  and  this  must 
have  been  what  pleased  me,  so  long  shut  up  to  the 
studio-work  of  Pope.  But  strangely  enough  I  did  not 
falter  in  my  allegiance  to  him,  or  realize  that  here  in 
this  free  form  was  a  deliverance,  if  I  liked,  from  the 
fetters  and  manacles  which  I  had  been  at  so  much 
pains  to  fit  myself  with.  Probably  nothing  would  then 
liave  persuaded  me  to  put  them  off  permanently,  or  to 
do  more  than  lay  them  aside  for  the  moment  while  I 
tried  that  new  stop  and  that  new  step. 

I  think  that  even  then  I  had  an  instinctive  doubt 
whether  formlessness  was  really  better  than  formality. 
Something,  it  seems  to  me,  may  be  contained  and  kept 
alive  in  formality,  but  in  formlessness  everything  spills 
and  wastes  away.  This  is  what  I  find  the  fatal  defect 
of  our  American  Ossian,  Walt  Whitman,  whose  way  is 
where  artistic  madness  lies.  He  had  great  moments, 
beautiful  and  noble  thoughts,  generous  aspirations,  and 
a  heart  wide  and  warm  enough  for  the  whole  race,  but 
he  had  no  bounds,  no  shape;  he  was  as  liberal  as  the 
casing  air,  but  he  was  often  as  vague  and  intangible. 
I  cannot  say  how  long  my  passion  for  Ossian  lasted,  but 
not  long,  I  fancy,  for  I  cannot  find  any  trace  of  it  in 
the  time  following  our  removal  from  Ashtabula  to  the 
county  seat  at  Jefferson.  I  kept  on  with  Pope,  I  kept 
on  with  Cervantes,  I  kept  on  with  Irving,  but  I  sup- 
pose there  was  really  not  substance  enough  in  Ossian  to 
feed  my  passion,  and  it  died  of  inanition. 

54 


XIII 

SHAKESPEARE 

The  establisliinent  of  our  paper  in  the  village  where 
there  had  been  none  before,  and  its  enlargement  from 
four  to  eight  pages,  were  events  so  filling  that  they 
left  little  room  for  any  other  excitement  but  that  of 
getting  acquainted  with  the  young  people  of  the  vil- 
lage, and  going  to  parties,  and  sleigh  rides,  and  walks, 
and  drives,  and  picnics,  and  dances,  and  all  the  other 
pleasures  in  which  that  community  seemed  to  indulge 
beyond  any  other  we  had  known.  The  village  was 
smaller  than  the  one  we  had  just  left,  but  it  was  by 
no  means  less  lively,  and  I  think  that  for  its  size  and 
time  and  place  it  had  an  uncommon  share  of  what  has 
since  been  called  culture.  The  intellectual  experience 
of  the  people  was  mainly  theological  and  political,  as 
it  was  everywhere  in  that  day,  but  there  were  several 
among  them  who  had  a  real  love  for  books,  and  when 
they  met  at  the  druggist's,  as  they  did  every  night,  to 
dispute  of  the  inspiration  of  the  Scriptures  and  the 
principles  of  the  Free  Soil  party,  the  talk  sometimes 
turned  upon  the  respective  merits  of  Dickens  and 
Thackeray,  Gibbon  and  !Macaulay,  Wordsworth  and 
Byron.  There  were  law  students  who  read  "  l^octes 
Ambrosiana?,"  the  Age  of  Reason,  and  Bailey's  "  Fes- 
tus,"  as  well  as  Blackstone's  Commentaries;  and  there 
was  a  public  library  in  that  village  of  six  himdred 
people,  small  but  very  well  selected,  which  was  kept  in 

55 


MY   LITEEARY   PASSIONS 

one  of  the  lawyers'  offices,  and  was  free  to  all.  It  seems 
to  me  now  that  the  people  met  there  oftener  than  they 
do  in  most  country  places,  and  rubbed  their  wits  to- 
gether more,  but  this  may  be  one  of  those  pleasing 
illusions  of  memory  which  men  in  later  life  are  sub- 
ject to. 

I  insist  Ti])on  nothing,  but  certainly  the  air  was 
friendlier  to  the  tastes  I  had  formed  than  any  I  had 
yet  known,  and  I  found  a  wider  if  not  deeper  sym- 
pathy with  them.  There  was  one  of  our  printers  who 
liked  books,  and  we  went  through  Don  Quixote  to- 
gether again,  and  through  the  Conquest  of  Granada, 
and  we  began  to  read  other  things  of  Irving's.  There 
was  a  very  good  little  stock  of  books  at  the  village  drug- 
store, and  among  those  that  began  to  come  into  my 
hands  were  the  poems  of  Dr.  Holmes,  stray  volumes 
of  De  Quincey,  and  here  and  there  minor  works  of 
Thackeray.  I  believe  I  had  no  money  to  buy  them, 
but  there  was  an  open  account,  or  a  comity,  between 
the  printer  and  the  bookseller,  and  I  must  have  been 
allowed  a  certain  discretion  in  regard  to  getting  books. 

Still  I  do  not  think  I  went  far  in  the  more  modern 
authors,  or  gave  my  heart  to  any  of  them.  Suddenly, 
it  was  now  given  to  Shakespeare,  witliout  notice  or 
reason,  that  I  can  recall,  except  that  my  friend  liked 
him  too,  and  that  we  found  it  a  double  pleasure  to 
read  him  together.  Printers  in  the  old-time  offices 
were  always  spouting  Shakes])eare  more  or  less,  and  I 
suppose  I  could  not  have  kept  away  from  him  much 
longer  in  the  nature  of  things.  I  cannot  fix  the  time 
or  place  v/hen  my  friend  and  1  began  to  read  him,  but 
it  was  in  the  fine  print  of  that  unhallowed  edition  of 
ours,  and  presently  we  had  great  lengths  of  him  by 
heart,  but  of  "  Hamlet,"  out  of  "  The  Tempest,"  out  of 
"  Macbeth,"  out  of  "  Richard  III.,"  out  of  "  Midsum- 

5G 


SHAKESPEARE 

uior-Xight's  Dream,"  out  of  tlie  "  Comedy  of  Errors," 
out  of  "  Julius  Cirsar,"  out  of  ''  Measure  for  Measure," 
out  of  "  Komeo  and  Juliet,"  out  of  "  Two  Gentlemou 
of  Verona." 

These  were  the  plays  that  we  loved,  and  must  have 
read  in  common,  or  at  least  at  the  same  time :  but  others 
that  I  more  especially  liked  were  the  Histories,  and 
among  them  particularly  were  the  Henrys,  where 
Falstaff  appeared.  This  gross  and  palpable  reprobate 
greatly  took  my  fancy.  I  delighted  in  him  immensely, 
and  in  his  comrades.  Pistol,  and  Bardolph,  and  Nym. 
I  could  not  read  of  his  death  without  emotion,  and  it 
was  a  personal  pang  to  me  when  the  prince,  croAvned 
king,  denied  him:  blackguard  for  blackguard,  I  still 
think  the  prince  the  worse  blackguard.  Perhaps  I 
flatter  myself,  but  I  believe  that  even  then,  as  a  boy 
of  sixteen,  I  fully  conceived  of  Falstaff's  character, 
and  entered  into  the  author's  wonderfully  humorous 
conception  of  him.  There  is  no  such  perfect  concep- 
tion of  the  selfish  sensualist  in  literature,  and  the  con- 
ception is  all  the  more  perfect  because  of  the  wit  that 
lights  up  the  vice  of  FalstafF,  a  cold  light  without  ten- 
derness, for  he  was  not  a  good  fellow,  though  a  merry 
companion.  I  am  not  sure  but  I  should  put  him  be- 
side Hamlet,  and  on  the  same  level,  for  the  merit  of 
his  artistic  completeness,  and  at  one  time  I  much  pre- 
ferred him,  or  at  least  his  humor. 

As  to  Falstaff  personally,  or  his  like,  I  was  rather 
fastidious,  and  would  not  have  made  friends  with  him 
in  the  flesh,  much  or  little.  I  revelled  in  all  his  ap- 
pearances in  the  Histories,  and  I  tried  to  be  as  happy 
where  a  factitious  and  perfunctory  Falstaff  comes  to 
life  again  in  the  "  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,"  though  at 
the  bottom  of  my  heart  I  felt  the  difference.  I  began 
to  make  mv  imitations  of  Shakespeare,  and  I  wrote 

57 


MY   LITEEARY   PASSIONS 

out  passages  where  Falstaff  and  Pistol  and  Bardolph 
talked  together,  in  that  Ercles  vein  which  is  so  easily 
caught.  This  was  after  a  year  or  two  of  the  irregular 
and  interrupted  acquaintance  wnth  the  author  which 
has  been  my  mode  of  friendship  with  all  the  authors 
I  have  loved.  My  worship  of  Shakespeare  w^ent  to 
heights  and  lengths  that  it  had  reached  with  no  earlier 
idol,  and  there  was  a  supreme  moment,  once,  when  I 
found  myself  saying  that  the  creation  of  Shakespeare 
was  as  great  as  the  creation  of  a  planet. 

There  ought  certainly  to  be  some  bound  beyond 
which  the  cult  of  favorite  authors  should  not  be  suf- 
fered to  go.  I  should  keep  well  within  the  limit  of 
that  early  excess  now,  and  should  not  liken  the  crea- 
tion of  Shakespeare  to  the  creation  of  any  heavenly 
body  bigger,  say,  than  one  of  the  nameless  asteroids 
tliat  revolve  between  Mars  and  Jupiter.  Even  this  I 
do  not  feel  to  be  a  true  means  of  comparison,  and  I 
think  that  in  the  case  of  all  great  men  we  like  to  let 
our  wonder  mount  and  mount,  till  it  leaves  the  truth 
behind,  and  honesty  is  pretty  much  cast  out  as  ballast. 
A  w^ise  criticism  will  no  more  magnify  Shakespeare  be- 
cause he  is  already  great  than  it  will  magnify  any  less 
man.  But  we  are  loaded  do\vn  with  the  responsibility 
of  finding  him  all  w^e  have  been  told  he  is,  and  we  must 
do  this  or  suspect  ourselves  of  a  want  of  taste,  a  want  of 
sensibility.  At  the  same  time,  we  may  really  be  honester 
than  those  who  have  led  us  to  expect  this  or  that  of  him, 
and  more  truly  his  friends.  I  wish  the  time  might  come 
when  we  could  read  Shakespeare,  and  Dante,  and 
Homer,  as  sincerely  and  as  fairly  as  we  read  any  new 
book  by  the  least  known  of  our  contemporaries.  The 
course  of  criticism  is  towards  this,  but  when  I  began  to 
read  Shakespeare  I  sliould  not  have  ventured  to  think 
that  he  was  not  at  every  moment  great.     I  should  no 

58 


SIIAKESPEAEE 

more  have  thought  of  questioning  the  poetry  of  any 
passage  in  him  than  of  questioning  the  proofs  of  holy 
writ.  All  the  same,  I  knew  very  well  that  much  which 
I  read  was  really  poor  stuif,  and  the  persons  and  posi- 
tions were  often  preposterous.  It  is  a  great  pity  that 
the  ardent  youth  should  not  he  permitted  and  even  en- 
couraged to  say  this  to  himself,  instead  of  falling 
slavishly  before  a  great  author  and  accepting  him  at  all 
points  as  infallible.  Shakespeare  is  fine  enough  and 
great  enough  when  all  the  possible  detractions  are  made, 
and  I  have  no  fear  of  saying  now  that  he  would  be  finer 
and  greater  for  the  loss  of  half  his  work,  though  if  I 
had  heard  any  one  say  such  a  thing  then  I  should  have 
held  him  as  little  better  than  one  of  the  wicked. 

Upon  the  whole  it  was  well  that  I  had  not  found  my 
way  to  Shakespeare  earlier,  though  it  is  rather  strange 
that  I  had  not.  I  knew  him  on  the  stage  in  most  of  the 
plays  that  used  to  be  given.  I  had  shared  the  conscience 
of  Macbeth,  the  passion  of  Othello,  the  doubt  of  Ham- 
let; many  times,  in  my  natural  affinity  for  villains,  I 
had  mocked  and  suffered  with  Kichard  III. 

Probably  no  dramatist  ever  needed  the  stage  less,  and 
none  ever  brought  more  to  it.  There  have  been  few 
joys  for  me  in  life  comparable  to  that  of  seeing  the 
curtain  rise  on  "  Hamlet,"  and  hearing  the  guards  begin 
to  talk  about  the  ghost;  and  yet  how  fully  this  joy 
imparts  itself  without  any  material  embodiment!  It 
is  the  same  in  the  whole  range  of  his  plays:  they  fill 
the  scene,  but  if  there  is  no  scene  they  fill  the  soul. 
They  are  neither  worse  nor  better  because  of  the  theatre. 
They  are  so  great  that  it  cannot  hamper  them ;  they  are 
so  vital  that  they  enlarge  it  to  their  own  proportions 
and  endue  it  with  something  of  their  own  living  force. 
They  make  it  the  size  of  life,  and  yet  they  retire  it  so 
wholly  that  you  think  no  more  of  it  than  you  think  of 

59 


MY   LITEIIARY   PASSIONS 

the  physiognomy  of  one  who  talks  importantly  to  you. 
I  have  heard  people  say  that  they  would  rather  not  see 
Shakespeare  played  than  to  see  him  played  ill,  but 
I  cannot  agree  "vvitli  them.  He  can  better  afford  to  be 
played  ill  than  any  other  man  that  ever  wrote.  Who- 
ever is  on  the  stage,  it  is  always  Shakespeare  who  ii^ 
speaking  to  me,  and  perhaps  this  is  the  reason  why  in 
the  past  I  can  trace  no  discrepancy  between  reading  his 
plays  and  seeing  them. 

The  effect  is  so  equal  from  either  experience  that  I 
am  not  sure  as  to  some  plays  whether  I  read  them  or 
saw  them  first,  though  as  to  most  of  them  I  am  aware 
that  I  never  saw  them  at  all;  and  if  the  whole  truth 
must  be  told  there  is  still  one  of  his  plays  that  I  have 
not  read,  and  I  believe  it  is  esteemed  one  of  his  great- 
est. There  are  several,  with  all  my  reading  of  others, 
that  I  had  not  read  till  wdthin  a  few  years;  and  I  do 
not  think  I  should  have  lost  much  if  I  had  never  read 
"  Pericles  "  and  "  Winter's  Tale." 

In  those  early  days  I  had  no  philosophized  preference 
for  reality  in  literature,  and  I  dare  say  if  I  had  been 
asked,  I  should  have  said  that  the  plays  of  Shakespeare 
where  reality  is  least  felt  Avere  the  most  imaginative; 
that  is  the  belief  of  the  puerile  critics  still ;  but  I  sup- 
pose it  was  my  instinctive  liking  for  reality  that  made 
the  great  Histories  so  delightful  to  me,  and  that 
rendered  "  Macbeth  "  and  "  Hamlet  "  vital  in  their 
very  ghosts  and  witches.  There  I  found  a  world  ap- 
preciable to  experience,  a  world  inexpressibly  vaster  and 
grander  than  the  poor  little  affair  that  T  had  only  known 
a  small  obscure  corner  of,  and  yet  of  one  quality  with 
it,  so  that  I  could  be  as  much  at  home  and  citizen  in  it 
as  where  I  actually  lived.  There  I  found  joy  and  sorrow 
mixed,  and  nothing  abstract  or  typical,  but  everything 
standing  for  itself,  and  not  for  some  other  thing.    Then, 

CO 


SIIAKESPEAKE 

I  suppose  it  was  the  interfusion  of  humor  through  so 
much  of  it,  that  made  it  all  precious  and  friendly.  I 
think  I  had  a  native  love  of  laughing,  which  was  fos- 
tered in  me  bj  my  father's  way  of  looking  at  life,  and 
had  certainly  been  flattered  by  my  intimacy  with  Cer- 
vantes; but  whether  this  was  so  or  not^  I  know  that  I 
liked  best  and  felt  deepest  those  plays  and  passages  in 
Shakespeare  where  the  alliance  of  the  tragic  and  the 
comic  was  closest.  Perhaps  in  a  time  when  self-con- 
sciousness is  so  widespread,  it  is  the  only  thing  that  saves 
us  from  ourselves.  I  am  sure  that  without  it  I  should 
not  have  been  naturalized  to  that  world  of  Shakespeare's 
Histories,  where  I  used  to  spend  so  much  of  my 
leisure,  with  such  a  sense  of  his  own  intimate  com- 
panionship there  as  I  had  nowhere  else.  I  felt  that  he 
must  somehow  like  my  being  in  the  joke  of  it  all,  and 
that  in  his  great  heart  he  had  room  for  a  boy  willing 
absolutely  to  lose  himself  in  him,  and  be  as  one  of  his 
creations. 

It  was  the  time  of  life  with  me  when  a  boy  begins 
to  be  in  love  with  the  pretty  faces  that  then  peopled 
this  world  so  thickly,  and  I  did  not  fail  to  fall  in  love 
with  the  ladies  of  that  Shakespeare-world  where  I  lived 
e(|ually.  I  cannot  tell  whether  it  was  because  I  found 
them  like  my  ideals  here,  or  whether  my  ideals  acquired 
merit  because  of  their  likeness  to  the  realities  there; 
they  appeared  to  be  all  of  one  degree  of  enchanting  love- 
liness ;  but  upon  the  whole  I  must  have  preferred  them 
in  the  plays,  because  it  was  so  much  easier  to  get  on 
with  them  there;  I  was  always  much  better  dressed 
there;  I  was  vastly  handsomer;  I  was  not  bashful  or 
afraid,  and  I  had  some  defects  of  these  advantages  to 
contend  with  here. 

That  friend  of  mine,  the  printer  whom  I  have  men- 
tioned, was  one  with  me  in  a  sense  of  the  Shakespearean 
s  01 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

humor,  and  he  dwelt  with  me  in  the  sort  of  double  being 
I  had  in  those  two  worlds.  We  took  the  book  into  the 
woods  at  the  ends  of  the  long  summer  afternoons  that 
remained  to  us  when  wc  had  finished  our  work,  and  on 
the  shining  Sundays  of  the  warm,  late  spring,  the  early, 
warm  autumn,  and  we  read  it  there  on  grassy  slopes  or 
heaps  of  fallen  leaves;  so  that  much  of  the  poetry  is 
mixed  for  me  with  a  rapturous  sense  of  the  out-door 
beauty  of  this  lovely  natural  world.  We  read  turn 
about,  one  taking  the  story  up  as  the  other  tired,  and  as 
we  read  the  drama  played  itself  under  the  open  sky  and 
in  the  free  air  with  such  orchestral  effects  as  the  sough- 
ing woods  or  some  rippling  stream  afforded.  It  was 
not  interrupted  when  a  squirrel  dropped  a  nut  on  us 
from  the  top  of  a  tall  hickory ;  and  the  plaint  of  a 
meadow-lark  prolonged  itself  with  unbroken  sweetness 
from  one  world  to  the  other. 

But  I  think  it  takes  two  to  read  in  the  open  air.  The 
pressure  of  walls  is  wanted  to  keep  the  mind  within 
itself  when  one  reads  alone;  otherwise  it  wanders  and 
disperses  itself  through  nature.  When  my  friend  left 
us  for  want  of  work  in  the  office,  or  from  the  vagarious 
impulse  which  is  so  strong  in  our  craft,  I  took  my 
Shakespeare  no  longer  to  the  woods  and  fields,  but 
pored  upon  him  mostly  by  night,  in  the  narrow  little 
space  which  I  had  for  my  study,  under  the  stairs  at 
home.  There  was  a  desk  pushed  back  against  the  wall, 
which  the  irregular  ceiling  sloped  down  to  meet  behind 
it,  and  at  my  left  was  a  window,  which  gave  a  good 
light  on  the  writing-leaf  of  my  desk.  This  was  ray 
workshop  for  six  or  seven  years,  and  it  was  not  at  all  a 
bad  one ;  I  have  had  many  since  that  were  not  so  much 
to  the  purpose;  and  though  I  would  not  live  my  life 
over,  I  would  willingly  enough  have  that  little  study 
mine  again.    But  it  is  gone  as  utterly  as  the  faces  and 

62 


SHAKESPEAKE 

voices  that  made  home  around  it,  and  that  I  was  fierce 
to  shut  out  of  it,  so  that  no  sound  or  sight  should  molest 
me  in  the  pursuit  of  the  end  which  I  sought  gropingly, 
blindly,  with  very  little  hope,  but  with  an  intense  ambi- 
tion, and  a  courage  that  gave  way  under  no  burden, 
before  no  obstacle.  Long  ago  changes  were  made  in  the 
low,  rambling  house  which  threw  my  little  closet  into  a 
larger  room;  but  this  was  not  until  after  I  had  left  it 
many  years ;  and  as  long  as  I  remained  a  part  of  that 
dear  and  simple  home  it  was  my  place  to  read,  to  write, 
to  muse,  to  dream. 

I  sometimes  wish  in  these  later  years  that  I  had 
spent  less  time  in  it,  or  that  world  of  books  which  it 
opened  into ;  that  I  had  seen  more  of  the  actual  world, 
and  had  learned  to  know  my  brethren  in  it  better.  I 
might  so  have  amassed  more  material  for  after  use  in 
literature,  but  I  had  to  fit  myself  to  use  it,  and  I  sup- 
pose that  this  was  what  I  was  doing,  in  my  own  way, 
and  by  such  light  as  I  had.  I  often  toiled  wrongly 
and  foolishly;  but  certainly  I  toiled,  and  I  suppose  no 
work  is  wasted.  Some  strength,  I  hope,  was  coming 
to  me,  even  from  my  mistakes,  and  though  I  went  over 
ground  that  I  need  not  have  traversed,  if  I  had  not  been 
left  so  much  to  find  the  way  alone,  yet  I  was  not  stand- 
ing still,  and  some  of  the  things  that  I  then  wished  to 
do  I  have  done.  I  do  not  mind  owning  that  in  others 
I  have  failed.  For  instance,  I  have  never  surpassed 
Shakespeare  as  a  poet,  though  I  once  firmly  meant  to 
do  so;  but  then,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  very  few 
other  people  have  surpassed  him,  and  that  it  would  not 
have  been  easy. 


XIV 

IK  MARVEL 

^[y  ardor  for  Shakespeare  must  have  been  at  its 
hc-ight  when  I  was  betw^een  sixteen  and  seventeen  years 
old,  for  I  fancy  when  I  began  to  formulate  my  admira- 
tion, and  to  try  to  measure  his  greatness  in  phrases,  I 
was  less  simply  impassioned  than  at  some  earlier  time. 
At  any  rate,  I  am  sure  that  I  did  not  proclaim  his  planet- 
ary importance  in  creation  until  I  was  at  least  nineteen. 
But  even  at  an  earlier  age  I  no  longer  worshipped  at  a 
single  shrine;  there  were  many  gods  in  the  temple  of 
my  idolatry,  and  I  bowed  the  knee  to  them  all  in  a  devo- 
tion which,  if  it  was  not  of  one  quality,  M-as  certainly 
impartial.  While  I  was  reading,  and  thinking,  and 
living  Shakespeare  with  such  an  intensity  that  I  do  not 
see  how  there  could  have  been  room  in  my  consciousness 
for  anything  else,  there  seem  to  have  been  half  a  dozen 
other  divinities  there,  great  and  small,  whom  I  have 
some  present  difficulty  in  distinguishing.  I  kept 
Irving,  and  Goldsmith,  and  Cervantes  on  their  old 
altars,  but  I  added  new  ones,  and  these  I  translated 
from  the  contemporary  literary  world  quite  as  often  as 
from  the  past.  I  am  rather  glad  that  among  them  was 
the  gentle  and  kindly  Ik  Marvel,  whose  Reveries  of  a 
Bachelor  and  whose  Dream  Life  the  young  people  of 
that  day  were  reading  with  a  tender  rapture  which 
would  not  be  altogether  surprising,  I  dare  say,  to  the 
young  people  of  this.    The  books  have  survived  the  span 

64 


IK  MAKVEL 

of  immortality  fixed  by  our  amusing  copyright  laws, 
and  seem  now,  when  any  pirate  publisher  may  plunder 
their  author,  to  have  a  new  life  before  them.  Perhaps 
this  is  ordered  by  Providence,  that  those  who  have  no 
right  to  them  may  profit  by  them,  in  that  divine  con- 
tempt of  such  profit  which  Providence  so  often  shows. 

I  cannot  understand  just  how  I  came  to  know  of  the 
books,  but  [  suppose  it  was  through  the  contemporary 
criticism  which  I  was  then  beginning  to  read,  wherever 
I  could  find  it,  in  the  magazines  and  newspapers ;  and 
I  could  not  say  why  I  thought  it  would  be  very  comme 
il  faut  to  like  them.  Probably  the  literary  fine  world, 
which  is  always  rubbing  shoulders  with  the  other  fine 
world,  and  bringing  off  a  little  of  its  powder  and 
perfume,  was  then  dawming  upon  me,  and  I  was  wish- 
ing to  be  of  it,  and  to  like  the  things  that  it  liked ;  I  am 
not  so  anxious  to  do  it  now.  But  if  this  is  true,  I  found 
the  books  better  than  their  friends,  and  had  many  a 
heartache  from  their  pathos,  many  a  genuine  glow  of 
purpose  from  their  high  import,  many  a  tender  suffusion 
from  their  sentiment.  I  dare  say  I  should  find  their 
pose  now  a  little  old-fashioned.  I  believe  it  was  rather 
full  of  sighs,  and  shrugs  and  starts,  expressed  in  dashes, 
and  asterisks,  and  exclamations,  but  I  am  sure  that  the 
feeling  was  the  genuine  and  manly  sort  which  is  of  all 
times  and  always  the  latest  wear.  Whatever  it  w^as,  it 
sufficed  to  win  my  heart,  and  to  identify  me  with  what- 
ever was  most  romantic  and  most  pathetic  in  it.  I  read 
Dream  Life  first — though  the  Reveries  of  a  Bachelor 
was  written  first,  and  I  believe  is  esteemed  the  better 
book — and  Dream  Life  remains  first  in  my  affections. 
I  have  now  little  notion  what  it  was  about,  but  I  love 
its  memory.  The  book  is  associated  especially  in  my 
mind  with  one  golden  day  of  Indian  summer,  w^hen  I 
carried  it  into  the  woods  with  me,  and  abandoned  my- 


MY   LlTEllAKY   TASSIONS 

self  to  a  welter  of  emotion  over  its  page.  I  lay  iindcr  a 
crimson  maple,  and  I  remember  how  the  light  struck 
through  it  and  flushed  the  print  with  the  gules  of  the 
foliage.  My  friend  was  away  by  this  time  on  one  of 
his  several  absences  in  the  Northwest,  and  I  was  quite 
alone  in  the  absurd  and  irrelevant  melancholy  witli 
which  I  read  myself  and  my  circumstances  into  tho 
book.  I  began  to  read  them  out  again  in  due  time, 
clothed  with  the  literary  airs  and  graces  that  I  admired 
in  it,  and  for  a  long  time  I  imitated  Ik  Marvel  in  the 
voluminous  letters  I  wrote  my  friend  in  compliance 
with  his  Shakespearean  prayer : 

"  To  Milan  let  me  hear  from  thee  by  letters. 
Of  thy  success  in  love,  and  what  news  else 
Betideth  here  in  absence  of  thy  friend; 
And  I  likewise  will  visit  thee  with  mine." 

Milan  was  then  presently  Sheboygan,  Wisconsin, 
and  Verona  was  our  little  village ;  but  they  both  served 
the  soul  of  youth  as  well  as  the  real  places  would  have 
done,  and  were  as  really  Italian  as  anything  else  in  the 
situation  was  really  this  or  that.  Heaven  knows  what 
gaudy  sentimental  parade  we  made  in  our  borrowed 
plumes,  but  if  the  travesty  had  kept  itself  to  the  written 
word  it  would  have  been  all  well  enough.  My  mis- 
fortune was  to  carry  it  into  print  when  I  began  to 
write  a  story  in  the  Ik  Marvel  manner,  or  rather  to  com- 
pose it  in  type  at  the  ease,  for  that  was  what  1  did ;  and 
it  was  not  altogether  imitated  from  Ik  Marvel  either, 
for  I  drew  upon  the  easier  art  of  Dickens  at  times,  and 
helped  myself  out  with  bald  parodies  of  Bleak  House 
in  many  places.  It  was  all  very  well  at  the  beginning, 
but  I  had  not  reckoned  with  the  future  sufficiently  to 
have  started  with  any  clear  ending  in  my  mind,  and  as  I 
went  on  I  began  to  find  myself  more  and  more  in  doubt 

66 


IK   MAKVEL 

about  it.  My  material  gave  out ;  incidents  failed  me ; 
tlie  characters  wavered  and  threatened  to  perish  on  my 
hands.  To  crown  my  misery  there  grew  up  an  im- 
patience with  the  story  among  its  readers,  and  this  found 
its  way  to  me  one  day  when  I  overheard  an  old  farmer 
who  came  in  for  his  paper  say  that  he  did  not  think  that 
story  amounted  to  much.  I  did  not  think  so  either,  but 
it  was  deadly  to  have  it  put  into  words,  and  how  I 
escaped  the  mortal  effect  of  the  stroke  I  do  not  know. 
Somehow  I  managed  to  bring  the  wretched  thing  to  a 
close,  and  to  live  it  slowly  into  the  past.  Slowly  it 
seemed  then,  but  I  dare  say  it  was  fast  enough;  and 
there  is  always  this  consolation  to  be  whispered  in  the 
ear  of  wounded  vanity,  that  the  world's  memory  is 
equally  bad  for  failure  and  success ;  that  if  it  will  not 
keep  your  triumphs  in  mind  as  you  think  it  ought, 
neither  will  it  long  dwell  upon  your  defeats.  But 
that  experience  was  really  terrible.  It  was  like  some 
dreadful  dream  one  has  of  finding  one's  self  in  battle 
without  the  courage  needed  to  carry  one  creditably 
through  the  action,  or  on  the  stage  unprepared  by 
study  of  the  part  which  one  is  to  appear  in.  I  have 
never  looked  at  that  story  since,  so  great  was  the  shame 
and  anguish  that  I  suffered  from  it,  and  yet  I  do  not 
think  it  was  badly  conceived,  or  attempted  upon  lines 
that  were  mistaken.  If  it  were  not  for  what  happened 
in  the  past  I  might  like  some  time  to  write  a  story  on 
the  same  lines  in  the  future. 


XV 

DICKENS 

What  I  have  said  of  Dickens  reminds  me  that  I 
had  been  reading  him  at  the  same  time  that  I  had  been 
reading  Ik  Marvel ;  but  a  curious  thing  about  the  read- 
ing of  my  later  boyhood  is  that  the  dates  do  not 
sharply  detach  themselves  one  from  another.  This 
may  be  so  because  ray  reading  was  much  more  multi- 
farious than  it  had  been  earlier,  or  because  I  was  read- 
ing always  two  or  three  authors  at  a  time.  I  think 
Macaulay  a  little  antedated  Dickens  in  my  affections, 
but  when  I  came  to  the  novels  of  that  masterful  artist 
(as  I  must  call  him,  with  a  thousand  reservations  as  to 
the  times  when  he  is  not  a  master  and  not  an  artist),  I 
did  not  fail  to  fall  under  his  spell. 

This  was  in  a  season  of  great  depression,  when  I 
began  to  feel  in  broken  health  tlie  effect  of  trying  to 
burn  my  candle  at  both  ends.  It  seemed  for  a  while 
very  simple  and  easy  to  come  home  in  the  middle  of 
the  afternoon,  when  my  task  at  the  printing-office  was 
done,  and  sit  down  to  my  books  in  my  little  study, 
which  I  did  not  finally  leave  until  the  family  were  in 
bed ;  but  it  was  not  well,  and  it  was  not  enough  that  I 
should  like  to  do  it.  The  most  that  can  be  said  in  de- 
fence of  such  a  thing  is  that  with  the  strong  native 
impulse  and  the  conditions  it  was  inevitable.  If  I 
was  to  do  tlie  thing  T  wanted  to  do  I  was  to  do  it  in 
that  wav,  and  T  wanted  to  do  that  thing,  whatever  it  was, 

68 


DICKENS 

more  than  I  wanted  to  do  anything  clso,  and  even  more 
than  I  wanted  to  do  nothing.  I  cannot  make  ont  tliat 
I  was  fond  of  study,  or  cared  for  tlie  things  I  was  trying 
to  do,  except  as  a  means  to  otlier  things.  As  far  as  my 
pleasure  went,  or  my  natural  bent  was  concerned,  I 
would  rather  have  been  Avandering  through  the  woods 
with  a  gun  on  my  shoulder,  or  lying  under  a  tree,  or 
reading  some  book  that  cost  me  no  sort  of  effort.  But 
there  was  much  more  than  my  pleasure  involved ;  there 
was  a  hope  to  fulfil,  an  aim  to  achieve,  and  I  could  no 
more  have  left  oif  trying  for  what  I  hoped  and  aimed 
at  than  I  could  have  left  oif  living,  though  I  did  not 
know  very  distinctly  what  either  was.  As  I  look  back 
at  the  endeavor  of  those  days  much  of  it  seems  mere 
purblind  groping,  wilful  and  wandering.  I  can  see 
that  doing  all  by  myself  I  was  not  truly  a  law  to  myself, 
but  only  a  sort  of  helpless  force. 

I  studied  Latin  because  I  believed  that  I  should 
read  the  Latin  authors,  and  I  suppose  I  got  as  much  of 
the  language  as  most  school-boys  of  my  age,  but  I  never 
read  any  Latin  author  but  Cornelius  ITepos.  I  studied 
Greek,  and  I  learned  so  much  of  it  as  to  read  a  chapter 
of  the  Testament,  and  an  ode  of  Anacreon.  Then  I 
left  it,  not  because  I  did  not  mean  to  go  farther,  or  in- 
deed stop  short  of  reading  all  Greek  literature,  but  be- 
cause that  friend  of  mine  and  I  talked  it  over  and  de- 
cided that  I  could  go  on  with  Greek  any  time,  but  I  had 
better  for  the  present  study  German,  with  the  help  of 
a  German  who  had  come  to  the  village.  Apparently  I 
was  carrying  forward  an  attack  on  French  at  the  same 
time,  for  I  distinctly  recall  my  failure  to  enlist  with  me 
an  old  gentleman  who  had  once  lived  a  long  time  in 
France,  and  whom  I  hoped  to  get  at  least  an  accent 
from.  Perhaps  because  he  knew  he  had  no  accent  worth 
speaking  of,  or  perhaps  because  he  did  not  want  the 

no 


MY   LITERAEY   PASSIONS 

bother  of  imparting  it,  he  never  would  keep  any  of  the 
engagements  he  made  with  me,  and  when  we  did  meet 
he  so  abounded  in  excuses  and  subterfuges  that  he  finally 
escaped  me,  and  I  was  left  to  acquire  an  Italian  accent 
of  French  in  Venice  seven  or  eight  years  later.  At  the 
same  time  I  was  reading  Spanish,  more  or  less,  but 
neither  wisely  nor  too  well.  Having  had  so  little  help 
in  my  studies,  I  had  a  stupid  pride  in  refusing  all,  even 
such  as  I  might  have  availed  myself  of,  without  shame, 
in  books,  and  I  would  not  read  any  Spanish  author  with 
English  notes.  I  would  have  him  in  an  edition  wholly 
Spanish  from  beginning  to  end,  and  I  w^ould  fight  my 
way  through  him  single-handed,  with  only  such  aid  as 
I  must  borrow  from  a  lexicon. 

I  now  call  this  stupid,  but  I  have  really  no  more 
right  to  blame  the  boy  who  was  once  I  than  I  have  to 
praise  him,  and  I  am  certainly  not  going  to  do  that. 
In  his  day  and  place  he  did  what  he  could  in  his  own 
way;  he  had  no  true  perspective  of  life,  but  I  do  not 
know  that  youth  ever  has  that.  Some  strength  came 
to  him  finally  from  the  mere  struggle,  undirected  and 
misdirected  as  it  often  was,  and  such  mental  fibre  as 
he  had  was  toughened  by  the  prolonged  stress.  It  could 
be  said,  of  course,  that  the  time  apparently  wasted  in 
these  effectless  studies  could  have  been  well  spent  in 
deepening  and  widening  a  knowledge  of  English  litera- 
ture never  yet  too  great,  and  I  have  often  said  this  my- 
self; but  then,  again,  I  am  not  sure  that  the  studies 
were  altogether  effectless.  I  have  sometimes  thought 
that  greater  skill  had  come  to  my  hand  from  them  than 
it  would  have  had  without,  and  I  have  trusted  that  in 
making  kno"\vn  to  me  the  sources  of  so  much  English, 
my  little  Latin  and  less  Greek  have  enabled  me  to  use 
my  own  speech  with  a  subtler  sense  of  it  than  I  should 
have  had  otherwise. 

YO 


DICKENS 

But  I  will  by  no  means  insist  upon  my  conjecture. 
Wliat  is  certain  is  that  for  the  present  my  studies,  with- 
out method  and  without  stint,  began  to  tell  upon  my 
health,  and  that  my  nerves  gave  way  in  all  manner  of 
hypochondriacal  fears.  These  finally  resolved  themselves 
into  one,  incessant,  inexorable,  which  I  could  escape  only 
through  bodily  fatigue,  or  through  some  absorbing  in- 
terest that  took  me  out  of  myself  altogether  and  filled 
my  morbid  mind  with  the  images  of  another's  creation. 

In  this  mood  I  first  read  Dickens,  whom  I  had 
known  before  in  the  reading  I  had  listened  to.  But 
now  I  devoured  his  books  one  after  another  as  fast  as 
I  could  read  them.  I  plunged  from  the  heart  of  one 
to  another,  so  as  to  leave  myself  no  chance  for  the 
horrors  that  beset  me.  Some  of  them  remain  associ- 
ated with  the  gloom  and  misery  of  that  time,  so  that 
when  I  take  them  up  they  bring  back  its  dreadful 
shadow.  But  I  have  since  read  them  all  more  than 
once,  and  I  have  had  my  time  of  thinking  Dickens, 
talking  Dickens,  and  writing  Dickens,  as  we  all  had 
who  lived  in  the  days  of  the  mighty  magician.  I 
fancy  the  readers  who  have  come  to  him  since  he 
ceased  to  fill  the  world  with  his  influence  can  have  little 
notion  how  great  it  was.  In  that  time  he  colored 
the  parlance  of  the  English-speaking  race,  and  formed 
upon  himself  every  minor  talent  attempting  fiction. 
While  his  glamour  lasted  it  was  no  more  possible  for 
a  yoimg  novelist  to  escape  writing  Dickens  than  it  was 
for  a  young  poet  to  escape  writing  Tennyson.  I  ad- 
mired other  authors  more;  I  loved  them  more,  but 
when  it  came  to  a  question  of  trying  to  do  something 
in  fiction  I  was  compelled,  as  by  a  law  of  nature,  to 
do  it  at  least  partially  in  his  way. 

All  the  while  that  he  held  me  so  fast  by  his  potent 
charm  I  was  aware  that  it  was  a  very  rough  magic 

71 


MY    LITEIIAKY   T ASSIGN'S 

now  ami  again,  but  I  could  not  assert  my  sense  of  this 
against  him  in  matters  of  character  and  structure.  To 
these  I  gave  in  helplessly ;  their  very  grotesqueness 
was  proof  of  their  divine  origin,  and  I  bowed  to  the 
crudest  manifestations  of  his  genius  in  these  kinds  as 
if  they  were  revelations  not  to  be  doubted  without 
sacrilege.  But  in  certain  small  matters,  as  it  were  of 
ritual,  I  suffered  myself  to  think,  and  I  remember 
boldly  speaking  my  mind  about  his  style,  which  I 
thought  bad. 

I  spoke  it  even  to  the  quaint  character  whom  I  bor- 
rowed his  books  from,  and  Avho  might  almost  have 
come  out  of  his  books.  He  lived  in  Dickens  in  a 
measure  that  I  have  never  known  another  to  do,  and 
my  contumely  must  have  brought  him  a  pang  that  was 
truly  a  personal  grief.  He  forgave  it,  no  doubt  be- 
cause I  bowed  in  the  Dickens  worship  without  ques- 
tion on  all  other  points.  He  was  then  a  man  well  on 
towards  iifty,  and  he  had  come  to  America  early  in  life, 
and  had  lived  in  our  village  many  years,  without  cast- 
ing one  of  his  English  prejudices,  or  ceasing  to  be  of 
a  contrary  opinion  on  every  question,  political,  relig- 
ious and  social.  He  had  no  fixed  belief,  but  he  went 
to  the  service  of  his  church  whenever  it  was  held 
among  us,  and  he  revered  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer 
while  he  disputed  the  authority  of  the  Bible  with  all 
comers.  He  had  become  a  citizen,  but  he  despised 
democracy,  and  achieved  a  hardy  consistency  only  by 
voting  with  the  pro-slavery  party  upon  all  measures 
friendly  to  the  institution  which  he  considered  the 
scandal  and  reproach  of  the  American  name.  From  a 
heart  tender  to  all,  he  liked  to  say  wanton,  savage  and 
cynical  things,  but  he  bore  no  malice  if  you  gainsaid 
him.  I  know  nothing  of  his  origin,  except  the  fact  of 
his  being  an  Englishman,  or  what  his  first  calling  had 

72 


DICKENS 

been ;  but  he  had  evolved  among  us  from  a  house- 
painter  to  an  organ-builder,  and  he  had  a  passionate 
love  of  music.  ITc  built  his  organs  from  the  ground 
up,  and  made  every  part  of  them  with  his  own  hands; 
I  believe  they  were  very  good,  and  at  any  rate  the 
churches  in  the  country  about  took  them  from  him  as 
fast  as  he  could  make  them.  He  had  one  in  his  own 
house,  and  it  was  fine  to  see  him  as  he  sat  before  it, 
with  his  long,  tremulous  hands  outstretched  to  the  keys, 
his  noble  head  thrown  back  and  his  sensitive  face  lifted 
in  the  rapture  of  his  music.  He  was  a  rarely  intelli- 
gent creature,  and  an  artist  in  every  fibre ;  and  if  you 
did  not  quarrel  with  his  manifold  perversities,  he  was  a 
delightful  companion. 

After  my  friend  went  away  I  fell  much  to  him  for 
society,  and  we  took  long,  rambling  walks  together,  or 
sat  on  the  stoop  before  his  door,  or  lounged  over  the 
books  in  the  drug-store,  and  talked  evermore  of  litera- 
ture. He  must  have  been  nearly  three  times  my  age, 
but  that  did  not  matter ;  we  met  in  the  equality  of  the 
ideal  world  where  there  is  neither  old  nor  young,  any 
more  than  there  is  rich  or  poor.  He  had  read  a  great 
deal,  but  of  all  he  had  read  he  liked  Dickens  best,  and 
was  always  coming  back  to  him  with  affection,  when- 
ever the  talk  strayed.  He  could  not  make  me  out  when 
I  criticised  the  style  of  Dickens;  and  when  I  praised 
Thackeray's  style  to  the  disadvantage  of  Dickens's  he 
could  only  accuse  me  of  a  sort  of  aesthetic  snobbishness 
in  my  preference.  Dickens,  he  said,  was  for  the  million, 
and  Thackeray  was  for  the  upper  ten  thousand.  His 
view  amused  me  at  the  time,  and  yet  I  am  not  sure 
that  it  was  altogether  mistaken. 

There  is  certainly  a  property  in  Thackeray  that 
somehow  flatters  the  reader  into  the  belief  that  he  is 
better  than  other  people.     I  do  not  mean  to  say  that 

73 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

this  was  why  I  thought  him  a  finer  writer  than  Dickens, 
but  I  will  own  that  it  was  probably  one  of  the  reasons 
why  I  liked  him  better;  if  I  appreciated  him  so  fully 
as  I  felt,  I  must  be  of  a  finer  porcelain  than  the  earthen 
pots  which  were  not  aware  of  any  particular  difference 
in  the  various  liquors  poured  into  them.  In  Dickens 
the  virtue  of  his  social  defect  is  that  he  never  appeals 
to  the  principle  which  sniffs,  in  his  reader.  The  base 
of  his  work  is  the  whole  breadth  and  depth  of  humanity 
itself.  It  is  helplessly  elemental,  but  it  is  not  the  less 
grandly  so,  and  if  it  deals  with  the  simpler  manifesta- 
tions of  character,  character  affected  by  the  interests 
and  passions  rather  than  the  tastes  and  preferences,  it 
certainly  deals  with  the  larger  moods  through  them.  1 
do  not  know  that  in  the  whole  range  of  his  work  he  once 
suffers  us  to  feel  our  superiority  to  a  fellow-creature 
through  any  social  accident,  or  except  for  some  moral 
cause.  This  makes  him  very  fit  reading  for  a  boy, 
and  I  should  say  that  a  boy  could  get  only  good  from 
him.  His  view  of  the  world  and  of  society,  though  it 
was  very  little  philosophized,  was  instinctively  sane 
and  reasonable,  even  when  it  was  most  impossible. 

We  are  just  beginning  to  discern  that  certain  con- 
ceptions of  our  relations  to  our  fellow-men,  once  for- 
mulated in  generalities  which  met  with  a  dramatic 
acceptation  from  the  world,  and  were  then  rejected  by 
it  as  mere  rhetoric,  have  really  a  vital  truth  in  them, 
and  that  if  they  have  ever  seemed  false  it  was  because 
of  the  false  conditions  in  which  we  still  live.  Equal- 
ity and  fraternity,  rhese  are  the  ideals  which  once 
moved  the  world,  and  then  fell  into  despite  and  mock- 
ery, as  unrealities;  but  now  they  assert  themselves  in 
our  hearts  once  more. 

Blindly,  unwittingly,  erringly  as  Dickens  often 
urged  them,  these  ideals  mark  the  whole  tendency  of 

74 


DICKENS 

his  fiction,  and  they  are  what  endear  him  to  the  heart, 
and  will  keep  him  dear  to  it  long  after  many  a  cun- 
ningcr  artificer  in  letters  has  passed  into  forgetfulness. 
I  do  not  pretend  that  I  perceived  the  full  scope  of  his 
books,  but  I  was  aware  of  it  in  the  finer  sense  which 
is  not  consciousness.  While  I  read  him,  I  was  in  a 
world  where  the  right  came  out  best,  as  I  believe  it 
will  yet  do  in  this  world,  and  where  merit  was  crowned 
with  the  success  which  I  believe  will  yet  attend  it  in 
our  daily  life,  untrammelled  by  social  convention  or 
economic  circumstance.  In  that  world  of  his,  in  the 
ideal  world,  to  which  the  real  world  must  finally  con- 
form itself,  I  dwelt  among  the  shows  of  things,  but 
under  a  Providence  that  governed  all  things  to  a  good 
end,  and  where  neither  wealth  nor  birth  could  avail 
against  virtue  or  right.  Of  course  it  was  in  a  way  all 
crude  enough,  and  was  already  contradicted  by  expe- 
rience in  the  small  sphere  of  my  own  being ;  but  never- 
theless it  was  true  with  that  truth  which  is  at  the 
bottom  of  things,  and  I  was  happy  in  it.  I  could  not 
fail  to  love  the  mind  which  conceived  it,  and  my  wor- 
ship of  Dickens  was  more  grateful  than  that  I  had  yet 
given  any  writer.  I  did  not  establish  with  him  that 
one-sided  understanding  which  I  had  with  Cervantes 
and  Shakespeare;  with  a  contemporary  that  was  not 
possible,  and  as  an  American  I  was  deeply  hurt  at  the 
things  he  had  said  against  us,  and  the  more  hurt  be- 
cause I  felt  that  they  were  often  so  just.  But  I  was  for 
the  time  entirely  his,  and  I  could  not  have  wished  to 
write  like  any  one  else. 

I  do.  not  pretend  that  the  spell  I  was  under  was 
wholly  of  a  moral  or  social  texture.  For  the  most  part 
I  was  charmed  with  him  because  he  was  a  delightful 
story-teller;  because  he  could  thrill  me,  and  make  me 
hot  and  cold ;  because  he  could  make  me  laugh  and  cry, 

75 


MY   LITEUAKY   PASSIONS 

and  iritop  my  pulse  and  breath  at  will.  There  seemed  an 
inexhaustible  source  of  humor  and  pathos  in  his  work, 
which  I  now  find  choked  and  dry ;  I  cannot  laugh  any 
more  at  Pickwick  or  Sam  Weller,  or  weep  for  little  Xell 
or  Paul  Dombey ;  their  jokes,  their  griefs,  seemed  to  me 
to  be  turned  on,  and  to  have  a  mechanical  action.  But 
beneath  all  is  still  the  strong  drift  of  a  genuine  emotion, 
a  sympath}',  deep  and  sincere,  with  the  poor,  the  lowly, 
the  unfortunate.  In  all  that  vast  range  of  fiction,  there 
is  nothing  that  tells  for  the  strong,  because  they  are 
strong,  against  the  weak,  nothing  that  tells  for  the 
haughty  against  the  humble,  nothing  that  tells  for 
wealth  against  poverty.  The  effect  of  Dickens  is  purely 
democratic,  and  however  contemptible  he  found  our 
pseudo-equality,  he  was  more  truly  democratic  than  any 
American  who  had  yet  written  fiction.  I  suppose  it  was 
our  instinctive  perception  in  the  region  of  his  instinctive 
expression,  that  made  him  so  dear  to  us,  and  wounded 
our  silly  vanity  so  keenly  through  our  love  when  he  told 
us  the  truth  about  our  horrible  sham  of  a  slave-based 
freedom.  But  at  any  rate  the  democracy  is  there  in 
his  work  more  than  he  knew  perhaps,  or  would  ever 
have  known,  or  ever  recognized  by  his  own  life.  In 
fact,  when  one  comes  to  read  the  story  of  his  life,  and 
to  know  that  he  w^as  really  and  lastingly  ashamed  of 
having  once  put  up  shoe-blacking  as  a  boy,  and  was 
unable  to  forgive  his  mother  for  suffering  him  to  be 
so  degraded,  one  perceives  that  he  too  w^as  the  slave 
of  conventions  and  the  victim  of  conditions  which  it 
is  the  liighest  function  of  his  fiction  to  help  destroy. 

I  imagine  that  my  early  likes  and  dislikes  in  Dickens 
were  not  very  discriminating.  I  liked  David  Copper- 
field,  and  Barnahy  Rvdgc,  and  Bleak  House,  and  I 
still  like  them;  but  I  do  not  think  I  liked  them  more 
than  Dombey  cf-  Son,  and  Nicholas  Nicldehy,  and  the 

70 


DICKENS 

Pickwicl'  Papers,  which  I  cannot  read  now  with  any 
sort  of  patience,  not  to  speak  of  pleasure,  I  liked 
Martin  Chuzzleivit,  too,  and  the  other  day  I  read  a 
great  part  of  it  again,  and  found  it  roughly  true  in  the 
passages  that  referred  to  America,  though  it  was  sur- 
charged in  the  serious  moods,  and  caricatured  in  the 
comic.  The  English  are  always  inadequate  observers; 
they  seem  too  full  of  themselves  to  have  eyes  and  ears 
for  any  alien  people ;  but  as  far  as  an  Englishman  could, 
Dickens  had  caught  the  look  of  our  life  in  certain 
aspects.  His  report  of  it  was  clumsy  and  farcical ;  but 
in  a  large,  loose  way  it  was  like  enough ;  at  least  he  had 
caught  the  note  of  our  self-satisfied,  intolerant,  and 
hypocritical  provinciality,  and  this  was  not  altogether 
lost  in  his  mocking  horse-play. 

I  cannot  make  out  that  I  was  any  the  less  fond  of 
Dickens  because  of  it.  I  believe  I  was  rather  more 
willing  to  accept  it  as  a  faithful  portraiture  then  than 
I  should  be  now;  and  I  certainly  never  made  any 
question  of  it  with  my  friend  the  organ-builder.  Mar- 
tin Chuzzleivit  was  a  favorite  book  with  him,  and  so 
was  the  Old  Curiosity  Shop.  Xo  doubt  a  fancied 
affinity  with  Tom  Pinch  through  their  common  love  of 
music  made  him  like  that  most  sentimental  and  im- 
probable personage,  whom  he  would  have  disowned 
and  laughed  to  scorn  if  he  had  met  him  in  life ;  but  it 
was  a  purely  altruistic  sympathy  that  he  felt  with 
Little  ISTell  and  her  grandfather,  lie  was  fond  of 
reading  the  pathetic  passages  from  both  books,  and  I 
can  still  hear  his  rich,  vibrant  voice  as  it  lingered  in 
tremulous  emotion  on  the  periods  he  loved.  lie  would 
catch  the  volume  up  anwhere,  any  time,  and  begin  to 
read,  at  the  book-store,  or  the  harness-shop,  or  the 
law-office,  it  did  not  matter  in  the  wide  leisure  of  a 
country  village,  in  those  days  before  the  war,  when 
6  77" 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

people  had  all  the  time  there  was;  and  he  was  sure  of 
his  audience  as  long  as  he  chose  to  read.  One  Christ- 
mas eve,  in  answer  to  a  general  wish,  he  read  the 
Christmas  Carol  in  the  Court-house,  and  people  came 
from  all  about  to  hear  him. 

He  was  an  invalid  and  he  died  long  since,  ending  a 
life  of  suffering  in  the  saddest  way.  Several  years 
before  his  death  money  fell  to  his  family,  and  he  went 
with  them  to  an  Eastern  city,  where  he  tried  in  vain 
to  make  himself  at  home.  He  never  ceased  to  pine 
for  the  village  he  had  left,  with  its  old  companion- 
ships, its  easy  usages,  its  familiar  faces ;  and  he  escaped 
to  it  again  and  again,  till  at  last  every  tie  was  severed, 
and  he  could  come  back  no  more.  He  was  never  recon- 
ciled to  the  change,  and  in  a  manner  he  did  really  die 
of  the  homesickness  which  deepened  an  hereditary  taint, 
and  enfeebled  him  to  the  disorder  that  carried  him  off. 
My  memories  of  Dickens  remain  mingled  with  my 
memories  of  this  quaint  and  most  original  genius,  and 
though  I  knew  Dickens  long  before  I  knew  his  lover,  I 
can  scarcely  think  of  one  without  thinking  of  the  other. 


XYl 

WORDSWORTH,  LOWELL,  CHAUCER 

Certain  other  books  I  associate  with  another  pathetic 
nature,  of  whom  the  organ-builder  and  I  were  both  fond. 
This  was  the  young  poet  who  looked  after  the  book  half 
of  the  village  drug  and  book  store,  and  who  wrote 
poetry  in  such  leisure  as  he  found  from  his  duties,  and 
with  such  strength  as  he  found  in  the  disease  preying 
upon  him.  lie  must  have  been  far  gone  in  consump- 
tion when  I  first  knew  him,  for  I  have  no  recollection 
of  a  time  when  his  voice  was  not  faint  and  husky,  his 
sweet  smile  wan,  and  his  blue  eyes  dull  with  the  disease 
that  wasted  him  away, 

"  Like  wax  in  the  fire. 
Like  snow   in   the   sun." 

People  spoke  of  him  as  once  strong  and  vigorous,  but 
I  recall  him  fragile  and  pale,  gentle,  patient,  knowing 
his  inexorable  doom,  and  not  hoping  or  seeking  to  escape 
it.  As  the  end  drew  near  he  left  his  employment  and 
went  home  to  the  farm,  some  twenty  miles  away,  where 
I  drove  out  to  see  him  once  through  the  deep  snow  of  a 
winter  which  was  to  be  his  last.  My  heart  was  heavy 
all  the  time,  but  he  tried  to  make  the  visit  pass  cheer- 
fully with  our  wonted  talk  about  books.  Only  at  part- 
ing, when  he  took  my  hand  in  his  thin,  cold  clasp,  he 
said,  "  I  suppose  my  disease  is  progressing,''  with  the 
patience  he  always  showed. 

79 


T^fY   LITEFARY   PASSIONS 

I  (lid  not  see  lilm  again,  and  I  am  not  sure  now 
lliat  his  gift  wan  very  distinct  or  very  great.  It  was 
slight  and  graceful  rather,  I  fancy,  and  if  he  had  lived 
it  might  not  have  sufficed  to  make  him  widely  known, 
but  he  had  a  real  and  a  very  delicate  sense  of  beauty 
in  literature,  and  I  believe  it  was  through  sympathy 
with  his  preferences  that  I  came  into  appreciation  of 
several  authors  whom  I  had  not  known,  or  had  not 
cared  for  before.  There  could  not  have  been  many 
shelves  of  books  in  that  store,  and  I  came  to  be  pretty 
well  acquainted  with  them  all  before  I  began  to  buy 
them.  For  the  most  part,  I  do  not  think  it  occurred 
to  me  that  they  were  there  to  be  sold ;  for  this  pale 
poet  seemed  indifferent  to  the  commercial  property  in 
them,  and  only  to  wish  me  to  like  them. 

I  am  not  sure,  but  I  think  it  was  through  some 
volume  which  I  found  in  his  charge  that  I  first  came*  to 
know  of  De  Quincey;  he  was  fond  of  Dr.  Holmes's 
poetry;  he  loved  Whittier  and  Longfellow,  each  repre- 
sented in  his  slender  stock  by  some  distinctive  work. 
There  were  several  stray  volumes  of  Thackeray's  minor 
w^ritings,  and  I  still  have  the  YeUov plush  Papers  in 
the  smooth  red  cloth  (now  pretty  well  tattered)  of 
Appleton's  Popular  Library,  which  I  bought  there. 
But  most  of  the  books  were  in  the  famous  old  brown 
cloth  of  Ticknor  &  Fields,  which  was  a  warrant  of  ex- 
cellence in  the  literature  it  covered.  Besides  these 
there  were  standard  volumes  of  poetry,  published  by 
Phillips  &  Sampson,  from  worn-out  plates;  for  a  l)irth- 
day  present  my  mother  got  me  Wordsworth  in  this 
shape,  and  I  am  glad  to  think  that  I  once  read  the 
"  Excursion  "  in  it,  for  I  do  not  think  I  could  do  so  now, 
and  I  have  a  feeling  that  it  is  very  right  and  fit  to  have 
read  the  "  Excursion."  To  be  honest,  it  was  very  hard 
reading  even   then,   and   I   cannot  truthfully  pretend 

80 


WOKDSWOKTII,  LOWELL,  CHAUCER 

that  I  liave  over  liked  Wordsworth  except  in  parts, 
though  for  the  matter  of  that,  I  do  not  suppose  that  any 
one  ever  did.  I  tried  hard  enough  to  like  everything  in 
him,  for  I  had  already  learned  enough  to  know  that  I 
ought  to  like  him,  and  that  if  I  did  not,  it  was  a  proof 
of  intellectual  and  moral  inferiority  in  me.  My  early 
idol.  Pope,  had  already  been  tumbled  into  the  dust  by 
Lowell,  whose  lectures  on  English  Poetry  had  lately 
been  given  in  Boston,  and  had  met  with  my  rapturous 
acceptance  in  such  newspaper  report  as  I  liad  of  them. 
So,  my  preoccupations  were  all  in  favor  of  the  Lake 
School,  and  it  was  both  in  my  will  and  my  conscience 
to  like  Wordsworth.  If  I  did  not  do  so  it  was  not  my 
fault,  and  the  fault  remains  very  much  what  it  first  was. 

I  feel  and  understand  him  more  deeply  than  I  did 
then,  but  I  do  not  think  that  I  then  failed  of  the 
meaning  of  much  that  I  read  in  him,  and  I  am  sure 
that  my  senses  were  quick  to  all  the  beauty  in  him. 
After  suffering  once  through  the  "  Excursion  "  I  did 
not  afflict  myself  with  it  again,  but  there  were  other 
poems  of  his  which  I  read  over  and  over,  as  I  fancy 
it  is  the  habit  of  every  lover  of  poetry  to  do  with  the 
pieces  he  is  fond  of.  Still,  I  do  not  make  out  that 
Wordsworth  was  ever  a  passion  of  mine;  on  the  other 
hand,  neither  was  Byron.  Him,  too,  I  liked  in  passages 
aud  in  certain  poems  which  I  knew  before  I  read 
Wordsworth  at  all ;  I  read  him  throughout,  but  I  did 
not  try  to  imitate  him,  and  I  did  not  try  to  imitate 
Wordsworth. 

Those  lectures  of  Lowell's  had  a  great  influence 
with  me,  and  I  tried  to  like  whatever  they  bade  me 
like,  after  a  fashion  common  to  young  people  when 
they  begin  to  read  criticisms ;  their  aesthetic  pride  is 
touched ;  they  wish  to  realize  that  they  too  can  feel  the 
fine  things  the  critic  admires.     From  this  motive  they 

81 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

do  a  great  deal  of  factitious  liking;  but  after  all  the 
affections  will  not  be  bidden,  and  the  critic  can  only 
avail  to  give  a  point  of  view,  to  enlighten  a  perspec- 
tive. When  I  read  Lowell's  praises  of  him,  I  had 
all  the  will  in  the  world  to  read  Spencer,  and  I  really 
meant  to  do  so,  but  I  have  not  done  so  to  this  day, 
and  as  often  as  I  have  tried  I  have  found  it  impossible. 
It  was  not  so  with  Chaucer,  whom  I  loved  from  the 
first  word  of  liis  which  I  found  quoted  in  those  lectures, 
and  in  Cliambers's  Encyclopaedia  of  English  Literature, 
which  I  had  borrowed  of  my  friend  the  organ-builder. 

In  fact,  I  may  fairly  class  Chaucer  among  my  pas- 
sions, for  I  read  him  with  that  sort  of  personal  attach- 
ment I  had  for  Cervantes,  who  resembled  him  in  a 
certain  sweet  and  cheery  humanity.  But  I  do  not 
allege  this  as  the  reason,  for  I  had  the  same  feeling 
for  Pope,  who  was  not  like  either  of  them.  Kissing 
goes  by  favor,  in  literature  as  in  life,  and  one  cannot 
quite  account  for  one's  passions  in  either ;  what  is  cer- 
tain is,  I  liked  Chaucer  and  I  did  not  like  Spencer; 
possibly  there  was  an  affinity  between  reader  and 
poet,  but  if  there  was  I  should  be  at  a  loss  to  name 
it,  unless  it  was  the  liking  for  reality,  and  the  sense  of 
mother  earth  in  human  life.  By  the  time  I  had  read 
all  of  Chaucer  that  I  could  find  in  the  various  collec- 
tions and  criticisms,  my  father  had  been  made  a  clerk 
in  the  legislature,  and  on  one  of  his  visits  home  he 
brought  me  the  poet's  works  from  the  State  Library, 
and  I  set  about  reading  them  with  a  glossary.  It  was 
not  easy,  but  it  brought  strength  with  it,  and  lifted 
my  heart  with  a  sense  of  noble  companionship. 

I  will  not  pretend  that  I  was  insensible  to  the  gross- 
ness  of  the  poet's  time,  wliicli  I  found  often  enough 
in  the  poet's  verse,  as  well  as  the  goodness  of  his  na- 
ture, and  my  father  seems  to  have  felt  a  certain  mis- 

82 


WOKDSWORTII,  LOWELL,  CHAUCER 

giving  about  it.  He  repeated  to  me  the  librarian's 
question  as  to  whether  he  thought  he  ought  to  put  an 
unexpurgated  edition  in  the  hands  of  a  boy,  and  his 
own  answer  that  he  did  not  believe  it  would  hurt  me. 
It  was  a  kind  of  appeal  to  me  to  make  the  event  justify 
him,  and  I  suppose  he  had  not  given  me  the  book  with- 
out due  reflection.  Probably  he  reasoned  that  with  my 
greed  for  all  manner  of  literature  the  bad  would  be- 
come known  to  me  along  with  the  good  at  any  rate,  and 
I  had  better  know  that  he  knew  it. 

The  streams  of  filth  flow  down  through  the  ages  in 
literature,  which  sometimes  seems  little  better  than  an 
open  sewer,  and,  as  I  have  said,  I  do  not  see  why  the 
time  should  not  come  when  the  noxious  and  noisome 
channels  should  be  stopped ;  but  the  base  of  the  mind 
is  bestial,  and  so  far  the  beast  in  us  has  insisted  upon 
having  his  full  say.  The  worst  of  lewd  literature  is 
that  it  seems  to  give  a  sanction  to  lewdness  in  the 
life,  and  that  inexperience  takes  this  effect  for  reality: 
that  is  the  danger  and  the  harm,  and  I  think  the  fact 
ought  not  to  be  blinked.  Compared  with  the  meaner 
poets  the  greater  are  the  cleaner,  and  Chaucer  w^as 
probably  safer  than  any  other  English  poet  of  his  time, 
but  I  am  not  going  to  pretend  that  there  are  not  things 
in  Chaucer  which  a  boy  w^ould  be  the  better  for  not 
reading;  and  so  far  as  these  words  of  mine  shall  be 
taken  for  counsel,  I  am  not  willing  that  they  should 
unqualifiedly  praise  him.  The  matter  is  by  no  means 
simple ;  it  is  not  easy  to  conceive  of  a  means  of  puri- 
fying the  literature  of  the  past  without  weakening  it, 
and  even  falsifying  it,  but  it  is  best  to  own  that  it  is 
in  all  respects  just  what  it  is,  and  not  to  feign  it  other- 
wise. I  am  not  ready  to  say  that  the  harm  from  it  is 
positive,  but  you  do  get  smeared  with  it,  and  the  filthy 
thought  lives  with  the  filtliy  rhyme  in  the  ear,  even 

83 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIOXS 

wlioii  it  docs  not  cornipt  the  heart  or  make  it  seem  a 
light  thing  for  the  reader's  tongue  and  pen  to  sin  in 
kind. 

1  loved  my  Chaucer  too  well,  I  hope,  not  to  get  some 
good  from  the  best  in  him ;  and  my  reading  of  criticism 
had  taught  me  how  and  where  to  look  for  the  best,  and 
to  know  it  when  I  had  found  it.  Of  course  I  began  to 
copy  him.  That  is,  I  did  not  attempt  anything  like 
his  tales  in  kind ;  they  must  have  seemed  too  hopelessly 
far  away  in  taste  and  time,  but  T  studied  his  verse,  and 
imitated  a  stanza  which  I  found  in  some  of  his  things 
and  had  not  found  elsewhere ;  I  rejoiced  in  the  fresh- 
ness and  sweetness  of  his  diction,  and  though  I  felt  that 
his  structure  was  obsolete,  there  was  in  his  wording 
something  homelier  and  heartier  than  the  imported  ana- 
logues that  had  taken  the  place  of  the  phrases  he  used. 

I  began  to  employ  in  my  own  work  the  archaic 
words  that  I  fancied  most,  which  was  futile  and  foolish 
enough,  and  I  formed  a  preference  for  the  simpler 
Anglo-Saxon  woof  of  our  speech,  which  was  not  so  bad. 
Of  course,  being  left  so  much  as  I  was  to  my  own  whim 
in  such  things,  I  could  not  keep  a  just  mean ;  I  had  an 
aversion  for  the  Latin  derivatives  which  was  nothing 
short  of  a  craze.  Some  half-bred  critic  whom  I  had  read 
made  me  believe  that  English  could  be  written  without 
them,  and  had  better  be  written  so,  and  I  did  not  escape 
from  this  lamentable  error  until  I  had  produced  with 
weariness  and  vexation  of  spirit  several  pieces  of  prose 
wholly  composed  of  monosyllables.  I  suspect  now  that  T 
did  not  always  stop  to  consider  whether  my  short  words 
were  not  as  Latin  by  race  as  any  of  the  long  words  I  re- 
jected, and  that  I  only  made  sure  they  were  short. 

The  frivolous  ingenuity  which  wasted  itself  in  this 
exercise  happily  could  not  hold  out  long,  and  in  verse 
it  was  pretty  well  helpless  from  the  beginning.     Yet 

84 


WORDSWORTH.  LOWELL,  CnAUCER 

I  will  not  altogether  blame  it,  for  it  made  me  know, 
as  nothing  else  could,  the  resources  of  our  tongue  in 
that  sort;  and  in  the  revolt  from  the  slavish  bondage 
I  took  upon  myself  I  did  not  go  so  far  as  to  plunge  into 
any  very  wild  polysyllabic  excesses.  I  still  like  the 
little  word  if  it  says  the  thing  E  want  to  say  as  well  as 
the  big  one,  but  I  honor  above  all  the  word  that  says  the 
thing.  At  the  same  time  I  confess  that  I  have  a  preju- 
dice against  certain  words  that  1  cannot  overcome;  the 
sight  of  some  offends  me,  the  sound  of  others,  and  rather 
than  use  one  of  those  detested  vocables,  even  when  I  per- 
ceive that  it  would  convey  mj'  exact  meaning,  I  would 
cast  about  long  for  some  other.  I  think  this  is  a  foible, 
and  a  disadvantage,  but  I  do  not  deny  it. 

An  author  who  had  much  to  do  with  preparing  me 
for  the  quixotic  folly  in  point  was  that  Thomas  Babing- 
ton  Macaulay,  who  taught  simplicity  of  diction  in 
phrases  of  as  "  learned  length  and  thundering  sound," 
as  any  he  would  have  had  me  shun,  and  who  deplored 
the  Latinistic  English  of  Johnson  in  terms  emulous  of 
the  great  doctor's  orotundity  and  j^onderosity.  I  wonder 
now  that  I  did  not  see  how  my  physician  avoided  his 
medicine,  but  I  did  not,  and  I  went  on  to  spend  myself 
in  an  endeavor  as  vain  and  senseless  as  any  that  pedan- 
try has  conceived.  It  was  none  the  less  absurd  because 
I  believed  in  it  so  devoutly,  and  sacrificed  myself  to  it 
with  such  infinite  pains  and  labor.  But  this  was  long 
after  I  read  Macaulay,  who  was  one  of  my  grand 
passions  before  Dickens  or  Chaucer. 


XVII 

MACAULAY 

One  of  the  many  characters  of  the  village  was  the 
machinist  who  had  his  shop  under  our  printing-office 
when  we  first  brought  our  newspaper  to  the  place,  and 
who  was  just  then  a  machinist  because  he  was  tired  of 
being  many  other  things,  and  had  not  yet  made  up  his 
mind  what  he  should  be  next.  He  could  have  been 
whatever  he  turned  his  agile  intellect  and  his  cunning 
hand  to ;  he  had  been  a  schoolmaster  and  a  watch-maker, 
and  I  believe  an  amateur  doctor  and  irregular  lawyer ; 
he  talked  and  wrote  brilliantly,  and  he  was  one  of  the 
group  that  nightly  disposed  of  every  manner  of  theo- 
retical and  practical  question  at  the  drug-store;  it  was 
quite  indifferent  to  him  which  side  he  took;  what 
he  enjoyed  was  the  mental  exercise.  He  was  in  con- 
sumption, as  so  many  were  in  that  region,  and  he  carbon- 
ized against  it,  as  he  said;  he  took  his  carbon  in  the 
liquid  form,  and  the  last  time  I  saw  him  the  carbon  had 
finally  prevailed  over  the  consumption,  but  it  had  itself 
become  a  seated  vice;  that  was  many  years  since,  and 
it  is  many  years  since  he  died. 

He  must  have  been  kno-\vn  to  me  earlier,  but  I  re- 
member him  first  as  he  swam  vividly  into  my  ken,  with 
a  volume  of  Macaulay's  essays  in  his  hand,  one  day. 
Less  figuratively  speaking,  he  came  up  into  the  printing- 
office  to  expose  from  the  book  the  nefarious  plagiarism 
of  an  editor  in  a  neighboring  city,  who  had  adapted 

8G  ' 


MACAULAY 

with  the  change  of  names  and  a  word  or  two  here  and 
there,  whole  passages  from  the  essay  on  Barere,  to  the 
denimciation  of  a  brother  editor.  It  Avas  a  very  simple- 
hearted  fraud,  and  it  w^as  all  done  with  an  innocent 
trust  in  the  popular  ignorance  wdiich  now  seems  to  me 
a  little  pathetic;  but  it  was  certainly  very  barefaced, 
and  merited  the  public  punishment  which  the  discoverer 
inflicted  by  means  of  wdiat  journalists  call  the  deadly 
parallel  column.  The  effect  ought  logically  to  have 
been  ruinous  for  the  plagiarist,  but  it  was  really  noth- 
ing of  the  kind.  He  simply  ignored  the  exposure, 
and  the  comments  of  the  other  city  papers,  and 
in  the  process  of  time  he  easily  lived  down  the  mem- 
ory of  it  and  went  on  to  greater  usefulness  in  his 
profession. 

But  for  the  moment  it  appeared  to  me  a  tremendous 
crisis,  and  I  listened  as  the  minister  of  justice  read  his 
communication,  with  a  thrill  which  lost  itself  in  the 
interest  I  suddenly  felt  in  the  plundered  author.  Those 
facile  and  brilliant  phrases  and  ideas  struck  me  as  the 
finest  things  I  had  yet  known  in  literature,  and  I  bor- 
row^ed  the  book  and  read  it  through.  Then  I  borrowed 
another  volume  of  JMacaulay's  essays,  and  another  and 
another,  till  I  had  read  them  every  one.  It  was  like  a 
long  debauch,  from  which  I  emerged  with  regret  that  it 
should  ever  end. 

I  tried  other  essayists,  other  critics,  whom  the  ma- 
chinist had  in  his  library,  but  it  was  useless;  neither 
Sidney  Smith  nor  Thomas  Carlyle  could  console  me; 
I  sighed  for  more  IMacaulay  and  evermore  Macaulay. 
I  read  his  History  of  England,  and  I  could  measurably 
console  myself  with  that,  but  only  measurably;  and  I 
could  not  go  back  to  the  essays  and  read  them  again, 
for  it  seemed  to  me  I  had  absorbed  them  so  thoroughly 
that  I  had  left  nothing  unenjoved  in  them.     I  used  to 

87'  " 


MY   LITEKAKY   PASSIONS 

talk  with  the  machinist  about  them,  and  with  the  organ- 
builder,  and  with  my  friend  the  printer,  but  no  one 
seemed  to  feel  the  intense  fascination  in  them  that  I 
did,  and  that  I  should  now  be  quite  unable  to  account 
for. 

Once  more  I  had  an  author  for  whom  I  could  feel 
a  personal  devotion,  whom  I  could  dream  of  and  dote 
upon,  and  whom  I  could  offer  my  intimacy  in  many 
an  impassioned  revery.  I  do  not  think  T.  B.  Macaulay 
would  really  have  liked  it;  I  dare  say  he  would  not 
have  valued  the  friendship  of  the  sort  of  a  youth  I  was, 
but  in  the  conditions  he  was  helpless,  and  I  poured  out 
my  love  upon  him  without  a  rebuff.  Of  course  I  re- 
formed my  prose  style,  which  had  been  carefully  mo- 
delled upon  that  of  Goldsmith  and  Irving,  and  began  to 
write  in  the  manner  of  Macaulay,  in  short,  quick  sen- 
tences, and  with  the  prevalent  use  of  brief  Anglo-Saxon 
words,  which  he  prescribed,  but  did  not  practise.  As 
for  his  notions  of  literature,  I  simply  accepted  them 
with  the  feeling  that  any  question  of  them  would  have 
been  little  better  than  blasphemy. 

For  a  long  time  he  spoiled  my  taste  for  any  other 
criticism;  he  made  it  seem  pale,  and  poor,  and  weak; 
and  he  blunted  my  sense  to  subtler  excellences  than  I 
found  in  him.  I  think  this  was  a  pity,  but  it  was  a 
thing  not  to  be  helped,  like  a  great  many  things  that 
happen  to  our  hurt  in  life ;  it  was  simply  inevitable. 
How  or  when  my  frenzy  for  him  began  to  abate  I 
cannot  say,  but  it  certainly  waned,  and  it  must  have 
waned  rapidly,  for  after  no  great  while  I  found  my- 
self feeling  the  charm  of  quite  different  minds,  as  fully 
as  if  his  had  never  enslaved  me.  I  cannot  regret  that 
I  enjoyed  him  so  keenly  as  T  did ;  it  was  in  a  way  a 
generous  delight,  and  though  he  swayed  me  helplessly 
whatever  way  he  thought,  I  do  not  think  yet  that  he 

88 


MACAULAY 

swayed  me  in  any  very  wrong  way.  lie  was  a  briglit 
and  clear  intelligence,  and  if  his  light  did  not  go  far, 
it  is  to  be  said  of  him  that  his  worst  fanlt  was  only  to 
have  stopped  short  of  the  finest  truth  in  art,  in  morals, 
in  politics. 


XVIII 

CRITICS  AND  REVIEWS 

What  remained  to  me  from  my  love  of  Macaiilay 
was  a  love  of  criticism,  and  I  read  almost  as  much  in 
criticism  as  I  read  in  poetry  and  history  and  fiction. 
It  was  of  an  eccentric  doctor,  another  of  the  village 
characters,  that  I  got  the  works  of  Edgar  A.  Poe ;  I  do 
not  know  just  how,  but  it  must  have  been  in  some  ex- 
change of  books ;  he  preferred  metaphysics.  At  any  rate 
I  fell  greedily  upon  them,  and  I  read  with  no  less  zest 
than  his  poems  the  bitter,  and  cruel,  and  narrow-minded 
criticisms  which  mainly  filled  one  of  the  volumes.  As 
usual,  I  accepted  them  implicitly,  and  it  was  not  till 
long  afterwards  that  I  understood  how  worthless  they 
were. 

I  think  that  hardly  less  immoral  than  the  lubricity  of 
literature,  and  its  celebration  of  the  monkey  and  the 
goat  in  us,  is  the  spectacle  such  criticism  affords  of  the 
tigerish  play  of  satire.  It  is  monstrous  that  for  no 
offence  but  the  wish  to  produce  something  beautiful,  and 
the  mistake  of  his  powers  in  that  direction,  a  writer 
should  become  the  prey  of  some  ferocious  wit,  and  that 
his  tormentor  should  achieve  credit  by  his  lightness  and 
ease  in  rending  his  prey;  it  is  shocking  to  think  how 
alluring  and  depraving  the  fact  is  to  the  young  reader 
emulous  of  such  credit,  and  eager  to  achieve  it.  Be- 
cause I  admired  these  barbarities  of  Poe's,  I  wished  to 
imitate  them,  to  spit  some  hapless  victim  on  my  own 

90 


CRITICS   AND   EEVIEWS 

spear,  to  make  him  suffer  and  to  make  the  reader  laugh. 
This  is  as  far  as  possible  from  the  criticism  that  en- 
lightens and  ennobles,  but  it  is  still  the  ideal  of  most 
critics,  deny  it  as  they  will ;  and  because  it  is  the  ideal 
of  most  critics  criticism  still  remains  behind  all  the 
other  literary  arts. 

I  am  glad  to  remember  that  at  the  same  time  I 
exulted  in  these  ferocities  I  had  mind  enough  and  heart 
enough  to  find  pleasure  in  the  truer  and  finer  work,  the 
humaner  work  of  other  ^vl•iters,  like  Ilazlitt,  and  Leigh 
Hunt,  and  Lamb,  which  became  known  to  me  at  a  date 
I  cannot  exactly  fix.  I  believe  it  was  Ilazlitt  whom  I 
read  first,  and  he  helped  me  to  clarify  and  formulate  my 
admiration  of  Shakespeare  as  no  one  else  had  yet  done ; 
Lamb  helped  me  too,  and  with  all  the  dramatists,  and 
on  every  hand  I  was  reaching  out  for  light  that  should 
enable  me  to  place  in  literary  history  the  authors  I  knew 
and  loved. 

I  fancy  it  was  well  for  me  at  this  period  to  have  got 
at  the  four  great  English  reviews,  the  Edinburgh,  the 
Westminster,  the  London  Quarterly ,  and  the  North 
British,  which  I  read  regularly,  as  well  as  Blackwood's 
Magazine.  We  got  them  in  the  American  editions  in 
payment  for  printing  the  publisher's  prospectus,  and 
their  arrival  was  an  excitement,  a  joy,  and  a  satisfaction 
with  me,  which  I  could  not  now  describe  without  having 
to  accuse  myself  of  exaggeration.  The  love  of  litera- 
ture, and  the  hope  of  doing  something  in  it,  had  become 
my  life  to  the  exclusion  of  all  other  interests,  or  it  was 
at  least  the  great  reality,  and  all  other  things  were  as 
shadows.  I  was  living  in  a  time  of  high  political  tumult, 
and  I  certainly  cared  very  much  for  the  question  of 
slavery  which  was  then  filling  the  minds  of  men ;  I  felt 
deeply  the  shame  and  wrong  of  our  Fugitive  Slave  Law ; 
I  was  stirred  by  the  news  from  Kansas,  where  the  great 

91 


MY    LITEKAKY   TAiSSlONS 

struggle  between  the  two  great  principles  in  our  na- 
tionality was  beginning  in  bloodshed ;  but  I  cannot  pre- 
tend that  any  of  these  things  were  more  than  ripples  on 
the  surface  of  n)y  intense  and  profound  interest  in 
literature.  If  I  was  not  to  live  by  it,  I  was  somehow 
to  live  for  it. 

If  I  thought  of  taking  up  some  other  calling  it  was 
as  a  means  only;  literature  was  always  the  end  I  had 
in  view,  immediately  or  finally.  I  did  not  see  how  it 
was  to  yield  me  a  living,  for  I  knew  that  almost  all  the 
literary  men  in  the  country  had  other  professions ;  they 
were  editors,  lawyers,  or  had  public  or  private  employ- 
ments ;  or  they  were  men  of  wealth ;  there  was  then  not 
one  who  earned  his  bread  solely  by  his  pen  in  fic- 
tion, or  drama,  or  history,  or  poetry,  or  criticism,  in  a 
day  when  people  wanted  very  much  less  butter  on  their 
bread  than  they  do  now.  But  I  kept  blindly  at  my 
studies,  and  yet  not  altogether  blindly,  for,  as  I  have 
said,  the  reading  I  did  had  more  tendency  than  before, 
and  I  was  beginning  to  see  authors  in  their  proj^ortion 
to  one  another,  and  to  the  "body  of  literature. 

The  English  reviews  were  of  great  use  to  me  in  this ; 
I  made  a  rule  of  reading  each  one  of  them  quite 
through.  To  be  sure  I  often  broke  this  rule,  as  people 
are  apt  to  do  with  rules  of  the  kind ;  it  was  not  possible 
for  a  boy  to  wade  through  heavy  articles  relating  to  Eng- 
lish politics  and  economic?,  but  I  do  not  think  I  left 
any  paper  upon  a  literary  topic  unread,  and  I  did  read 
enough  politics,  especially  in  Blaclcwood's,  to  be  of  Tory 
opinions;  they  were  very  fit  opinions  for  a  boy,  and 
they  did  not  exact  of  me  any  change  in  regard  to  the 
slavery  question. 


XIX 

A  NON-LITERARY  EPISODE 

I  SUPPOSE  I  might  almost  class  my  devotion  to  Eng- 
lish reviews  among  my  literary  passions,  but  it  was  of 
very  short  lease,  not  beyond  a  year  or  two  at  the  most. 
In  the  midst  of  it  I  made  my  first  and  only  essay  aside 
from  the  lines  of  literature,  or  rather  wholly  apart 
from  it.  After  some  talk  with  my  father  it  was  decided, 
mainly  by  myself,  I  suspect,  that  I  should  leave  the 
printing-office  and  study  law ;  and  it  was  arranged  with 
the  United  States  Senator  who  lived  in  our  village,  and 
who  was  at  home  from  Washington  for  the  siunmer,  that 
I  was  to  come  into  his  ofl&ce.  The  Senator  was  by  no 
means  to  undertake  my  instruction  himself ;  his  nephew, 
who  had  just  begun  to  read  law,  was  to  be  my  fellow- 
student,  and  we  were  to  keep  each  other  up  to  the  work, 
and  to  recite  to  each  other,  until  we  thought  we  had 
enough  law  to  go  before  a  board  of  attorneys  and  test 
our  fitness  for  admission  to  the  bar. 

This  was  the  custom  in  that  day  and  place,  as  I  sup- 
pose it  is  still  in  most  parts  of  the  country.  We  were 
to  be  fitted  for  practice  in  the  courts,  not  only  by  our 
reading,  but  by  a  season  of  pettifogging  before  justices 
of  the  peace,  which  I  looked  forward  to  with  no  small 
shrinking  of  my  shy  spirit ;  but  what  really  troubled 
me  most,  and  was  always  the  grain  of  sand  between  my 
teeth,  was  Blackstone's  confession  of  his  o^^^l  original 
preference  for  literature,  and  his  perception  that  the 
7  93 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

law  was  "  a  jealous  mistress,"  who  would  suffer  no 
rival  in  his  affections.  I  agreed  with  him  that  I  could 
not  go  through  life  with  a  divided  interest ;  I  must  give 
up  literature  or  I  must  give  up  law.  I  not  only  con- 
sented to  this  logically,  but  I  realized  it  in  my  attempt 
to  carry  on  the  reading  I  had  loved,  and  to  keep  at  the 
efforts  I  was  always  making  to  write  something  in  verse 
or  prose,  at  night,  after  studying  law  all  day.  The 
strain  was  great  enough  when  I  had  merely  the  work  in 
the  printing-office;  but  now  I  came  home  from  my 
Blackstone  mentally  fagged,  and  I  could  not  take  up  the 
authors  whom  at  the  bottom  of  my  heart  I  loved  so  much 
better.  I  tried  it  a  month,  but  almost  from  the  fatal  day 
when  I  found  that  confession  of  Blackst one's,  my  whole 
being  turned  from  the  "  jealous  mistress  "  to  the  high- 
minded  muses. 

I  had  not  only  to  go  back  to  literature,  but  I  had 
also  to  go  back  to  the  printing-office.  I  did  not  regret 
it,  but  I  had  made  my  change  of  front  in  the  public 
eye,  and  I  felt  that  it  put  me  at  a  certain  disadvantage 
with  my  fellow-citizens;  as  for  the  Senator,  whose 
office  I  had  forsaken,  I  met  him  now  and  then  in  the 
street,  without  trying  to  detain  him,  and  once  when 
he  came  to  the  printing-office  for  his  paper  we  en- 
countered at  a  point  where  we  could  not  help  speak- 
ing. He  looked  me  over  in  my  general  effect  of  base 
mechanical,  and  asked  me  if  I  had  given  up  the  law; 
I  had  only  to  answer  him  I  had,  and  our  conference 
ended. 

It  was  a  terrible  moment  for  me,  because  I  knew 
that  in  his  opinion  I  had  chosen  a  path  in  life,  which 
if  it  did  not  lead  to  the  Poor  House  was  at  least  no 
way  to  the  Wliite  House.  I  suppose  now  that  he 
thought  I  had  merely  gone  back  to  my  trade,  and  so 
for  the  time  I  had;  but  I  have  no  reason  to  suppose 

94 


A  NON-LITERARY   EPISODE 

that  he  judged  my  case  narrow-mindedly,  and  I  ought 
to  have  had  the  courage  to  have  the  affair  out  with 
him,  and  tell  him  just  why  I  had  left  the  law;  we  had 
sometimes  talked  the  English  reviews  over,  for  he  read 
them  as  well  as  I,  and  it  ought  not  to  have  been  im- 
possible for  me  to  be  frank  with  him;  but  as  yet  I 
could  not  trust  any  one  with  my  secret  hope  of  some 
day  living  for  literature,  although  I  had  already  lived 
for  nothing  else.  I  preferred  the  disadvantage  which 
I  must  be  at  in  his  eyes,  and  in  the  eyes  of  most  of 
my  fellow-citizens ;  I  believe  I  had  the  applause  of  the 
organ-builder,  who  thought  the  law  no  calling  for  me. 

In  that  village  there  was  a  social  equality  which,  if 
not  absolute,  was  as  nearly  so  as  can  ever  be  in  a  com- 
petitive civilization;  and  I  could  have  suffered  no 
slight  in  the  general  esteem  for  giving  up  a  profession 
and  going  back  to  a  trade;  if  I  was  despised  at  all  it 
was  because  I  had  thrown  away  the  chance  of  material 
advancement;  I  dare  say  some  people  thought  I  was  a 
fool  to  do  that.  'No  one,  indeed,  could  have  imagined 
the  rapture  it  was  to  do  it,  or  what  a  load  rolled  from 
my  shoulders  when  I  dropped  the  law  from  them. 
Perhaps  Sinbad  or  Christian  could  have  conceived  of 
my  ecstatic  relief;  yet  so  far  as  the  popular  vision 
reached  I  was  not  returning  to  literature,  but  to  the 
printing  business,  and  I  myself  felt  the  difference. 
My  reading  had  given  me  criterions  different  from 
those  of  the  simple  life  of  our  village,  and  I  did  not 
flatter  myself  that  my  calling  would  have  been  thought 
one  of  great  social  dignity  in  the  world  where  I  hoped 
some  day  to  make  my  living.  My  convictions  were 
all  democratic,  but  at  heart  I  am  afraid  I  was  a  snob, 
and  was  unworthy  of  the  honest  work  which  I  ought 
to  have  felt  it  an  honor  to  do;  this,  whatever  we 
falsely  pretend  to  the  contrary,  is  the  frame  of  every 

.95 


MY   TJTEEAEY   PASSIONS 

one  who  aspires  bojorid  tlic  work  of  liis  hands.  T  do 
not  know  how  it  had  become  mine,  except  through  my 
reading,  and  I  tliiiik  it  was  through  the  devotion  I 
then  had  for  a  certain  author  that  I  came  to  a  knowledgo 
not  of  good  and  evil  so  much  as  of  common  and  super- 
fine. 


XX 

THACKERAY 

It  was  of  the  organ-builder  that  I  had  Thackeray's 
books  first.  He  knew  their  literary  quality,  and  their 
rank  in  the  literary  world ;  but  I  believe  he  was  sur- 
prised at  the  passion  I  instantly  conceived  for  them. 
He  could  not  understand  it;  he  deplored  it  almost  as 
a  moral  defect  in  me ;  though  he  honored  it  as  a  proof 
of  my  critical  taste.    In  a  certain  measure  he  was  right. 

What  flatters  the  worldly  pride  in  a  young  man  is 
what  fascinates  him  with  Thackeray.  With  his  air  of 
looking  down  on  the  highest,  and  confidentially  inviting 
you  to  be  of  his  company  in  the  seat  of  the  scorner  he 
is  irresistible;  his  very  confession  that  he  is  a  snob, 
too,  is  balm  and  solace  to  the  reader  who  secretly  ad- 
mires the  splendors  he  affects  to  despise.  His  senti- 
mentality is  also  dear  to  the  heart  of  youth,  and  the  boy 
who  is  dazzled  by  his  satire  is  melted  by  his  easy  pathos. 
Then,  if  the  boy  has  read  a  good  many  other  books,  ho 
is  taken  with  that  abundance  of  literary  turn  and  allu- 
sion in  Thackeray;  there  is  hardly  a  sentence  but  re- 
minds him  that  he  is  in  the  society  of  a  great  literary 
swell,  who  has  read  everything,  and  can  mock  or  bur- 
lesque life  right  and  left  from  the  literature  always  at 
his  command.  At  the  same  time  he  feels  his  mastery, 
and  is  abjectly  grateful  to  him  in  his  own  simple  love 
of  the  good  for  his  patronage  of  the  unassuming  virtues. 
It  is  so  pleasing  to  one's  vanity,  and  so  safe,  to  be  of  the 

97' 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

master's  side  when  he  assails  those  vices  and  foibles 
which  are  inherent  in  the  system  of  things,  and  which 
one  can  contemn  with  vast  applause  so  long  as  one  does 
not  attempt  to  imdo  the  conditions  thej  spring  from. 

I  exulted  to  have  Thackeray  attack  the  aristocrats, 
and  expose  their  wicked  pride  and  meanness,  and  I 
never  noticed  that  he  did  not  propose  to  do  away  with 
aristocracy,  which  is  and  must  always  be  just  what  it 
has  been,  and  which  cannot  be  changed  while  it  exists 
at  all.  He  appeared  to  me  one  of  the  noblest  crea- 
tures that  ever  was  when  he  derided  the  shams  of  so- 
ciety; and  I  was  far  from  seeing  that  society,  as  we 
have  it,  was  necessarily  a  sham ;  when  he  made  a  mock 
of  snobbishness  I  did  not  know  but  snobbishness  was 
something  that  might  be  reached  and  cured  by  ridicule. 
]^ow  I  know  that  so  long  as  we  have  social  inequality 
we  shall  have  snobs ;  we  shall  have  men  who  bully  and 
truckle,  and  women  w^ho  snub  and  crawl.  I  know  that 
it  is  futile  to  spurn  them,  or  lash  them  for  trying  to 
get  on  in  the  world,  and  that  the  world  is  what  it  must 
be  from  the  selfish  motives  which  underlie  our  economic 
life.  But  I  did  not  know  these  things  then,  nor  for 
long  afterwards,  and  so  I  gave  my  heart  to  Thackeray, 
who  seemed  to  promise  me  in  his  contempt  of  the  world 
a  refuge  from  the  shame  I  felt  for  my  o"\vn  want  of 
figure  in  it.  He  had  the  effect  of  taking  me  into  the 
great  world,  and  making  me  a  party  to  his  splendid  in- 
difference to  titles,  and  even  to  royalties;  and  I  could 
not  see  that  sham  for  sham  he  was  imwittingly  the 
greatest  sham  of  all. 

I  think  it  w'as  Pendcnnis  I  began  with,  and  I  lived 
in  the  book  to  the  very  last  line  of  it,  and  made  its  alien 
circumstance  mine  to  the  smallest  detail.  I  am  still 
not  sure  but  it  is  the  author's  greatest  book,  and  I 
speak  from  a  thorough  acquaintance  wdth  every  line 

98 


THACKERAY 

he  has  written,  except  the  Virginians,  which  I  have 
never  been  able  to  read  quite  through;  most  of  his 
work  I  have  read  twice,  and  some  of  it  twenty  times. 

After  reading  Pendennis  I  went  to  Vanity  Fair, 
which  I  now  think  the  poorest  of  Thackeray's  novels 
— crude,  heavy-handed,  caricatured.  About  the  same 
time  I  revelled  in  the  romanticism  of  Henry  Esmond, 
with  its  pseudo-eighteenth-century  sentiment,  and  its 
appeals  to  an  overwrought  ideal  of  gentlemanhood  and 
honor.  It  was  long  before  I  was  duly  revolted  by 
Esmond's  transfer  of  his  passion  from  the  daughter 
to  the  mother  whom  he  is  successively  enamoured  of. 
I  believe  this  unpleasant  and  preposterous  affair  is 
thought  one  of  the  fine  things  in  the  story;  I  do  not 
mind  owning  that  I  thought  it  so  myself  when  I  was 
seventeen;  and  if  I  could  have  found  a  Beatrix  to  be 
in  love  with,  and  a  Lady  Castlewood  to  be  in  love 
with  me,  I  should  have  asked  nothing  finer  of  fortune. 
The  glamour  of  Henry  Esmond  was  all  the  deeper  be- 
cause I  was  reading  the  Spectator  then,  and  was  con- 
stantly in  the  company  of  Addison,  and  Steele,  and 
Swift,  and  Pope,  and  all  the  wits  at  Will's,  who  are 
presented  evanescently  in  the  romance.  The  intensely 
literary  keeping,  as  well  as  quality,  of  the  story  I  sup- 
pose is  what  formed  its  highest  fascination  for  me; 
but  that  effect  of  great  world  which  it  imparts  to  the 
reader,  making  him  citizen,  and,  if  he  will,  leading 
citizen  of  it,  was  what  helped  turn  my  head. 

This  is  the  toxic  property  of  all  Thackeray's  writ- 
ing. He  is  himself  forever  dominated  in  imagination 
by  the  world,  and  even  while  he  tells  you  it  is  not  worth 
while  he  makes  you  feel  that  it  is  worth  while.  It  is 
not  the  honest  man,  but  the  man  of  honor,  who  shines 
in  his  page ;  his  meek  folk  are  proudly  meek,  and  there 
is  a  touch  of  superiority,  a  glint  of  mundane  splendor, 

99 


:^^r  literary  passions 

ill  liis  lowliest.  ITe  rails  at  tlic  order  of  things,  but  ho 
imagines  nothing  different,  even  when  he  shows  that  its 
baseness,  and  cruelty,  and  hypoerisy  arc  wcllnigh  in- 
evitable, and,  for  most  of  those  v/ho  wish  to  get  on  in  it, 
quite  inevitable.  He  has  a  good  word  for  the  virtues, 
he  patronizes  the  Christian  gi'aces,  he  pats  humble  merit 
on  the  head;  he  has  even  explosions  of  indignation 
against  the  insolence  and  pride  of  birth,  and  purse- 
])ride.  But,  after  all,  he  is  of  the  world,  worldly,  and 
the  highest  hope  he  holds  out  is  that  you  may  be  in  the 
world  and  despise  its  ambitions  while  you  compass  its 
ends. 

I  should  be  far  from  blaming  him  for  all  this.  He 
was  of  his  time;  but  since  his  time  men  have  thought 
beyond  him,  and  seen  life  with  a  vision  wdiich  makes 
his  seem  rather  purblind.  He  must  have  been  im- 
mensely in  advance  of  most  of  the  thinking  and  feeling 
of  his  day,  for  people  then  used  to  accuse  his  senti- 
mental pessimism  of  cynical  qualities  which  we  could 
hardly  find  in  it  now^  It  was  the  age  of  intense  indi- 
vidualism, when  you  w^ere  to  do  right  because  it  was 
becoming  to  you,  say,  as  a  gentleman,  and  you  were  to 
have  an  eye  single  to  the  effect  upon  your  character,  if 
not  your  reputation ;  you  were  not  to  do  a  mean  thing 
because  it  was  wrong,  but  because  it  was  mean.  It  was 
romanticism  carried  into  the  region  of  morals.  But  T 
had  very  little  concern  then  as  to  that  sort  of  error. 

I  was  on  a  very  high  aesthetic  horse,  which  I  could 
not  have  conveniently  stooped  from  if  I  had  wished; 
it  was  quite  enough  for  me  that  Thackeray's  novels 
were  prodigious  works  of  art,  and  I  acquired  merit,  at 
least  with  myself,  for  appreciating  them  so  keenly,  for 
liking  them  so  much.  It  must  be,  I  felt  with  far  less 
consciousness  than  my  formulation  of  the  feeling  ex- 
presses, that  I  was  of  some  finer  sort  myself  to  be 

100 


THACKERAY 

able  to  enjoy  sucli  a  fine  sort.  I^o  doubt  T  should 
have  hoon  a  coxcomb  of  some  kind,  if  not  that  kind, 
and  I  shall  not  be  very  strenuous  in  censuring  Thack- 
eray for  his  effect  upon  me  in  this  way.  'No  doubt 
the  effect  was  already  in  me,  and  he  did  not  so  much 
produce  it  as  find  it. 

In  the  mean  time  he  was  a  vast  delight  to  me,  as 
much  in  the  variety  of  liis  minor  works — his  YelloW' 
plush,  and  Letters  of  Mr.  Brown,  and  Adventures  of 
Major  Gahafjan,  and  the  Paris  Sketch  Booh,  and  the 
Irish  Slrtch  Booh,  and  the  Great  Iloggarty  Diamond, 
and  the  Booh  of  Snohs,  and  the  English  Humorists, 
and  the  Four  Oeorges,  and  all  the  multitude  of  his 
essays,  and  verses,  and  caricatures — as  in  the  spacious 
designs  of  his  huge  novels,  the  Newcomes,  and  Pen- 
dennis,  and  Vanity  Fair,  and  Henry  Esmond,  and 
Barry  Lyndon. 

There  was  something  in  the  art  of  the  last  which 
seemed  to  me  then,  and  still  seems,  the  farthest  reach 
of  the  author's  great  talent.  It  is  couched,  like  so 
much  of  his  work,  in  the  autobiographic  form,  which 
next  to  the  dramatic  form  is  the  most  natural,  and 
which  lends  itself  with  such  flexibility  to  the  purpose 
of  the  author.  In  Barry  Lyndon  there  is  imagined  to 
the  life  a  scoundrel  of  such  rare  quality  that  he  never 
supposes  for  a  moment  but  he  is  the  finest  sort  of  a 
gentleman ;  and  so,  in  fact,  he  was,  as  most  gentlemen 
went  in  his  day.  Of  course,  the  picture  is  overcolored ; 
it  was  the  vice  of  Thackeray,  or  of  Thackeray's  time, 
to  surcharge  all  imitations  of  life  and  character,  so  that 
a  generation  apparently  much  slower,  if  not  duller  than 
ours,  should  not  possibly  miss  the  artist's  meaning. 
But  I  do  not  think  it  is  so  much  surcharged  as  Esmond; 
Barry  Lyndon  is  by  no  manner  of  means  so  conscious 
as  that  mirror  of  gentlemanhood,  with  its  manifold  self- 

101 


MY  LITERARY   PASSIONS 

reverberations;  and  for  these  reasons  I  am  inclined  to 
think  he  is  the  most  perfect  creation  of  Thackeray's 
mind. 

I  did  not  make  the  acquaintance  of  Thackeray's 
books  all  at  once,  or  even  in  rapid  succession,  and  he 
at  no  time  possessed  the  whole  empire  of  my  catholic, 
not  to  say,  fickle,  affections,  during  the  years  I  was 
compassing  a  full  knowledge  and  sense  of  his  gTcatness, 
and  burning  incense  at  his  shrine.  But  there  was  a 
moment  when  he  so  outshone  and  overtoi^ped  all  other 
divinities  in  my  worship  that  I  was  effectively  his 
alone,  as  I  have  been  the  helpless  and,  as  it  were,  hypno- 
tized devotee  of  three  or  four  others  of  the  very  great. 
From  his  art  there  flowed  into  me  a  literary  quality 
which  tinged  my  whole  mental  substance,  and  made  it 
impossible  for  me  to  say,  or  wish  to  say,  ani^iihing  with- 
out giving  it  the  literary  color.  That  is,  while  he  domi- 
nated my  love  and  fancy,  if  I  had  been  so  fortunate 
as  to  have  a  simple  concept  of  anything  in  life,  I  must 
have  tried  to  give  the  expression  of  it  some  turn  or  tint 
that  would  remind  the  reader  of  books  even  before  it 
reminded  him  of  men. 

It  is  hard  to  make  out  what  I  mean,  but  this  is  a 
try  at  it,  and  I  do  not  know  that  I  shall  be  able  to  do 
better  unless  I  add  that  Thackeray,  of  all  the  writers 
that  I  have  known,  is  the  most  thoroughly  and  pro- 
foundly imbued  with  literature,  so  that  when  he  speaks 
it  is  not  v/ith  words  and  blood,  but  with  words  and 
ink.  You  may  read  the  greatest  part  of  Dickens,  as 
you  may  read  the  greatest  part  of  ITawthorne  or  Tolstoy, 
and  not  once  be  reminded  of  literature  as  a  business 
or  a  cult,  but  you  can  hardly  read  a  paragraph,  hardly  a 
sentence,  of  Thackeray's  without  being  reminded  of  it 
either  by  suggestion  or  downright  allusion. 

I  do  not  blame  him  for  this ;  he  was  himself,  and  lie 
102 


THACKERAY 

could  not  liave  been  any  other  manner  of  man  without 
loss ;  but  I  say  that  the  greatest  talent  is  not  that  which 
breathes  of  the  library,  but  that  which  breathes  of  the 
street,  the  field,  the  open  sky,  the  simple  earth.  I 
began  to  imitate  this  master  of  mine  almost  as  soon 
as  I  began  to  read  him;  this  must  be,  and  I  had  a 
greater  pride  and  joy  in  my  success  than  I  should 
probably  have  known  in  anything  really  creative;  I 
should  have  suspected  that,  I  should  have  distrusted 
that,  because  I  had  nothing  to  test  it  by,  no  model ;  but 
here  before  me  was  the  very  finest  and  noblest  model, 
and  I  had  but  to  form  my  lines  upon  it,  and  I  had  pro- 
duced a  work  of  art  altogether  more  estimable  in  my 
eyes  than  anything  else  could  have  been.  I  saw  the 
little  world  about  me  through  the  lenses  of  my  master's 
spectacles,  and  I  reported  its  facts,  in  his  tone  and  his 
attitude,  with  his  self-flattered  scorn,  his  showy  sighs, 
his  facile  satire.  I  need  not  say  I  was  perfectly  satis- 
fied with  the  result,  or  that  to  be  able  to  imitate 
Thackeray  was  a  much  greater  thing  for  me  than  to  have 
been  able  to  imitate  nature.  In  fact,  I  could  have 
valued  any  picture  of  the  life  and  character  I  knew 
only  as  it  put  me  in  mind  of  life  and  character  as  these 
had  shown  themselves  to  me  in  his  books. 


XXI 

"  LAZARILLO  DE  TORMES  " 

At  the  same  time,  I  was  not  only  reading  many 
Looks  besides  Thackeray's,  but  I  was  studying  to  get 
a  smattering  of  several  languages  as  well  as  I  could, 
with  or  without  help.  I  could  now  manage  Spanish 
fairly  well,  and  I  was  sending  on  to  'New  York  for 
authors  in  that  tongue.  I  do  not  remember  how  I 
got  the  money  to  buy  them ;  to  be  sure  it  was  no  great 
sum;  but  it  must  have  been  given  me  out  of  the  sums 
we  were  all  working  so  hard  to  make  up  for  the  debt, 
and  the  interest  on  the  debt  (that  is  always  the  wicked 
pinch  for  the  debtor ! ) ,  we  had  incurred  in  the  purchase 
of  the  newspaper  which  we  lived  by,  and  the  house 
which  we  lived  in.  I  spent  no  money  on  any  other  sort 
of  pleasure,  and  so,  I  suppose,  it  was  afforded  me  the 
more  readily;  but  I  cannot  really  recall  the  history  of 
those  acquisitions  on  its  financialside.  In  any  case, 
if  the  sums  I  laid  out  in  literature  could  not  have  been 
comparatively  great,  the  excitement  attending  the  out- 
lay was  prodigious. 

I  know  that  I  used  to  write  on  to  Messrs.  Roe  Lock- 
wood  &  Son,  I^ew  York,  for  my  Spanish  books,  and  I 
dare  say  that  my  letters  were  sufficiently  pedantic,  and 
filled  with  a  simulated  acquaintance  with  all  Spanish 
literature.  Heaven  knows  what  they  must  have  thought, 
if  they  thought  anything,  of  their  queer  customer  in 
that  obscure  little  Ohio  village ;  but  he  could  not  have 

104 


"LAZAEILLO   DE   TORMES " 

been  queerer  to  them  than  to  his  fellow-villagers,  I  am 
sure.  I  haunted  the  post-offiee  about  the  time  the  books 
Avore  due,  and  when  I  found  one  of  them  in  our  deep 
box  among  a  heap  of  exchange  newspapers  and  business 
letters,  my  emotion  was  so  great  that  it  almost  took  my 
breath.  I  hurried  home  with  the  precious  volume,  and 
shut  myself  into  my  little  den,  where  I  gave  myself  up 
to  a  sort  of  transport  in  it.  These  books  were  always 
from  the  collection  of  Spanish  authors  published  by 
Baudry  in  Paris,  and  they  were  in  saffron-colored  paper 
covers,  printed  full  of  a  perfectly  intoxicating  catalogue 
of  other  Spanish  books  which  I  meant  to  read,  every  one, 
some  time.  The  paper  and  the  ink  had  a  certain  odor 
which  was  sweeter  to  me  than  the  perfumes  of  Araby. 
The  look  of  the  type  took  me  more  than  the  glance  of 
a  girl,  and  I  had  a  fever  of  longing  to  know  the  heart 
of  the  book,  which  was  like  a  lover's  passion.  Some- 
times I  did  not  reach  its  heart,  but  commonly  I  did. 
Moratin's  Origins  of  the  Spanish  Theatre,  and  a  large 
volume  of  Spanish  dramatic  authors,  were  the  first 
Spanish  books  I  sent  for,  but  I  could  not  say  why  I 
sent  for  them,  unless  it  was  because  I  saw  that  there 
were  some  plays  of  Cervantes  among  the  rest.  I  read 
these  and  I  read  several  comedies  of  Lope  de  Vega,  and 
numbers  of  archaic  dramas  in  Moratin's  history,  and  I 
really  got  a  fairish  perspective  of  the  Spanish  drama, 
which  has  now  almost  wholly  faded  from  my  mind.  It 
is  more  intelligible  to  me  why  I  should  have  read 
Conde's  Dominion  of  the  Arabs  in  Spain;  for  that  was 
in  the  line  of  my  reading  in  Irving,  which  would  account 
for  my  pleasure  in  the  History  of  the  Civil  Wars  of 
Granada;  it  was  some  time  before  I  realized  that  the 
chronicles  in  this  were  a  bundle  of  romances  and  not 
veritable  records;  and  my  whole  study  in  those  things 
was  wholly  undirected  and  unenlightened.    But  I  meant 

105 


MY   LITERARY  PASSIONS 

to  be  thorough  iu  it,  and  I  could  not  rest  satisfied  with 
the  Spanish-English  grammars  I  had ;  I  was  not  willing 
to  stop  short  of  the  official  grammar  of  the  Spanish 
'Academy.  I  sent  to  Il\"ew  York  for  it,  and  my  book- 
sellers there  reported  that  they  would  have  to  send 
to  Spain  for  it.  I  lived  till  it  came  to  hand  through 
them  from  Madrid;  and  I  do  not  understand  why 
I  did  not  perish  then  from  the  pride  and  joy  I  had 
in  it. 

But,  after  all,  I  am  not  a  Spanish  scholar,  and  can 
neither  speak  nor  write  the  language.  I  never  got  more 
than  a  good  reading  use  of  it,  perhaps  because  I  never 
really  tried  for  more.  But  I  am  very  glad  of  that, 
because  it  has  been  a  gi*eat  pleasure  to  me,  and  even 
some  profit,  and  it  has  lighted  up  many  meanings  in 
literature,  which  must  always  have  remained  dark  to 
me.  IS^ot  to  speak  now  of  the  modern  Spanish  writers 
whom  it  has  enabled  me  to  know  in  their  own  houses 
as  it  were,  I  had  even  in  that  remote  day  a  rapturous 
delight  in  a  certain  Spanish  book,  which  was  well  worth 
all  the  pains  I  had  undergone  to  get  at  it.  This  was 
the  famous  picaresque  novel,  Lazarillo  de  Tormes,  by 
Hurtado  de  Mendoza,  whose  name  then  so  familiarized 
itself  to  my  fondness  that  now  as  I  write  it  I  feel  as  if 
it  were  that  of  an  old  personal  friend  whom  I  had 
kno^vn  in  the  flesh.  I  believe  it  would  not  have  been 
always  comfortable  to  know  Mendoza  outside  of  his 
books;  he  was  rather  a  terrible  person;  he  was  one  of 
the  Spanish  invaders  of  Italy,  and  is  known  in  Italian 
history  as  the  Tyrant  of  Siena.  But  at  my  distance  of 
time  and  place  I  could  safely  revel  in  his  friendship, 
and  as  an  author  I  certainly  found  him  a  most  charm- 
ing companion.  The  adventures  of  his  rogue  of  a  hero, 
who  began  life  as  the  servant  and  accomplice  of  a  blind 
beggar,  and  then  adventured  on  through  a  most  divert- 

106 


"LAZARILLO   DE   TORMES" 

ing  career  of  knavery,  brought  back  tlic  atmosphere  of 
Don  Quixote,  and  all  the  landscape  of  that  dear  wonder- 
world  of  S]>ain,  where  I  had  lived  so  nmch,  and  I  fol- 
lowed him  with  all  the  old  delight. 

I  do  not  know  that  I  should  counsel  others  to  do  so, 
or  that  the  general  reader  would  find  his  account  in 
it,  but  I  am  sure  that  the  intending  author  of  American 
fiction  would  do  well  to  study  the  Spanish  picaresque 
novels ;  for  in  their  simplicity  of  design  he  will  find 
one  of  the  best  forms  for  an  American  story.  The  in- 
trigue of  close  texture  wull  never  suit  our  conditions, 
which  are  so  loose  and  open  and  variable ;  each  man's 
life  among  us  is  a  romance  of  the  Spanish  model,  if  it 
is  the  life  of  a  man  who  has  risen,  as  we  nearly  all  have, 
with  many  ups  and  downs.  The  story  of  Lazarillo  is 
gross  in  its  facts,  and  is  mostly  "  unmeet  for  ladies," 
like  most  of  the  fiction  in  all  languages  before  our 
times ;  but  there  is  an  honest  simplicity  in  the  narration, 
a  pervading  humor,  and  a  rich  feeling  for  character  that 
gives  it  value. 

I  think  that  a  good  deal  of  its  foulness  was  lost 
upon  me,  but  I  certainly  understood  that  it  would  not 
do  to  present  it  to  an  American  public  just  as  it  was, 
in  the  translation  which  I  presently  planned  to  make. 
I  went  about  telling  the  story  to  people,  and  trying  to 
make  them  find  it  as  amusing  as  I  did,  but  whether  I 
ever  succeeded  I  cannot  say,  though  the  notion  of  a 
version  with  modifications  constantly  grew  with  me, 
till  one  day  I  went  to  the  city  of  Cleveland  with  my 
father.  There  was  a  branch  house  of  an  Eastern  firm 
of  publishers  in  that  place,  and  I  must  have  had  the 
hope  that  I  might  have  the  courage  to  propose  a  trans- 
lation of  Lazarillo  to  them.  My  father  urged  me  to 
try  my  fortune,  but  my  heart  failed  me.  I  was  half 
blind  with  one  of  the  headaches  that  tormented  me  in 

107 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS  • 

tbosc  da3'S,  and  I  turned  my  sick  cjcs  from  the  sign, 
"  J.  P.  Jewett  &  Co.,  Publishers,"  which  held  me  fas- 
cinated, and  went  home  without  at  least  having  my 
much-drcamed-of  version  of  Lazarillo  refused. 


XXII 

CURTIS,  LONGFELLOW,  SCHLEGEL 

I  AM  quite  at  a  loss  to  know  why  my  reading  had  this 
direction  or  that  in  those  days.  It  had  necessarily 
passed  beyond  my  father's  suggestion,  and  I  think  it 
must  have  been  largely  by  accident  or  experiment  that 
I  read  one  book  rather  than  another.  He  made  some 
sort  of  newspaper  arrangement  w^ith  a  book-store  in 
Cleveland,  which  was  the  means  of  enriching  our  home 
library  with  a  goodly  number  of  books,  shop-worn,  but 
none  the  worse  for  that,  and  new  in  the  only  way  that 
books  need  be  new  to  the  lover  of  them.  Among  these 
I  found  a  treasure  in  Curtis's  two  books,  the  Nile  Notes 
of  a  Howadji,  and  tlie  Howadji  in  Syria.  I  already 
knew  him  by  his  Potiphar  Papers,,  and  the  ever-delight- 
ful reveries  which  have  since  gone  under  the  name  of 
Prue  and  I;  but  those  books  of  Eastern  travel  opened  a 
new  world  of  thinking  and  feeling.  They  had  at  once 
a  great  influence  upon  me.  The  smooth  richness  of 
their  diction ;  the  amiable  sweetness  of  their  mood,  their 
gracious  caprice,  the  delicacy  of  their  satire  (which  was 
so  kind  that  it  should  have  some  other  name),  their 
abundance  of  light  and  color,  and  the  deep  heart  of 
humanity  underlying  their  airiest  fantasticality,  all 
united  in  an  effect  which  was  different  from  any  I  had 
yet  known. 

As  usual,  I  steeped  myself  in  them,  and  the  first  run- 
nings of  my  fancy  when  T  began  to  pour  it  ont  after- 

109 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

Avards  were  of  their  flavor.  I  tried  to  write  like  this  new 
master ;  but  whether  I  had  tried  or  not,  I  should  prob- 
ably have  done  so  from  the  love  I  bore  him.  lie  was  a 
favorite  not  only  of  mine,  but  of  all  the  young  people 
in  the  village  who  were  reading  current  literature,  so 
that  on  this  ground  at  least  I  had  abundant  s^^mpathy. 
The  present  generation  can  have  little  notion  of  the  deep 
impression  made  upon  the  intelligence  and  conscience 
of  the  whole  nation  by  the  Potiphar  Papers,  or  how  its 
fancy  was  rapt  with  the  Prue  and  I  sketches.  These  are 
among  the  most  veritable  literary  successes  we  have  had, 
and  probably  we  who  were  so  glad  when  the  author  of 
these  beautiful  things  turned  aside  from  the  flowery 
paths  where  he  led  us,  to  battle  for  freedom  in  the  field 
of  politics,  Avould  have  felt  the  sacrifice  too  great  if  we 
could  have  dreamed  it  would  be  life-long.  But,  as  it 
was,  we  could  only  honor  him  the  more,  and  give 
him  a  place  in  our  hearts  which  he  shared  with  Long- 
fellow. 

This  divine  poet  I  have  never  ceased  to  read.  His 
Hiawatha  was  a  new  book  during  one  of  those  terrible 
Lake  Shore  winters,  but  all  the  other  poems  were  old 
friends  with  me  by  that  time.  With  a  sister  who  is 
no  longer  living  I  had  a  peculiar  affection  for  his  pretty 
and  touching  and  lightly  humorous  tale  of  Kavanagli, 
which  was  of  a  village  life  enough  like  our  own,  in 
some  things,  to  make  us  know  the  truth  of  its  delicate 
realism.  We  used  to  read  it  and  talk  it  fondly  over  to- 
gether, and  I  believe  some  stories  of  like  make  and 
manner  grew  out  of  our  pleasure  in  it.  They  were  never 
finished,  but  it  was  enough  to  begin  them,  and  there 
were  few  writers,  if  any,  among  those  I  delighted  in 
w^ho  escaped  the  tribute  of  an  imitation.  One  has  to 
begin  that  way,  or  at  least  one  had  in  my  day ;  perhaps 
it  is  now  possible  for  a  young  writer  to  begin  by  being 

110 


CURTIS,  LONGFELLOW,   SCHLEGEL 

himself;  but  for  my  part,  that  was  not  half  so  important 
as  to  bo  like  some  one  else.  Literature,  not  life,  was 
my  aim,  and  to  reproduce  it  was  my  joy  and  my 
pride. 

I  was  widening  my  knowledge  of  it  helplessly  and 
involuntarily,  and  I  was  always  chancing  upon  some 
book  that  served  this  end  among  the  great  number  of 
books  that  I  read  merely  for  my  pleasure  without  any 
real  result  of  the  sort.  Schlegel's  Lectures  on  Dramatic 
Literature  came  into  my  hands  not  long  after  I  had 
finished  my  studies  in  the  history  of  the  Spanish 
theatre,  and  it  made  the  whole  subject  at  once  luminous. 
I  cannot  give  a  due  notion  of  the  comfort  this  book 
afforded  me  by  the  light  it  cast  upon  paths  where  I  had 
dimly  made  my  way  before,  but  which  I  now  followed  in 
the  full  day. 

Of  course,  I  pinned  my  faith  to  everything  that 
Schlegel  said.  I  obediently  despised  the  classic  unities 
and  the  French  and  Italian  theatre  which  had  perpetu- 
ated them,  and  I  revered  the  romantic  drama  which 
had  its  glorious  course  among  the  Spanish  and  Eng- 
lish poets,  and  which  was  crowned  with  the  fame  of  the 
Cervantes  and  the  Shakespeare  whom  I  seemed  to  own, 
they  owned  me  so  completely.  It  vexes  me  now  to  find 
that  I  cannot  remember  how  the  book  came  into  my 
hands,  or  who  could  have  suggested  it  to  me.  It  is 
possible  that  it  may  have  been  that  artist  who  came 
and  stayed  a  month  with  us  while  she  painted  my 
mother's  portrait.  She  was  fresh  from  her  studies  in 
]^ew  York,  where  she  had  met  authors  and  artists  at 
the  house  of  the  Carey  sisters,  and  had  even  once  seen 
my  adored  Curtis  somewhere,  though  she  had  not  spoken 
with  him.  Her  talk  about  these  things  simply  era- 
paradised  me ;  it  lifted  me  into  a  heaven  of  hope  that  I, 
too,  might  some  day  meet  such  elect  spirits  and  con- 
Ill 


]^fY   LITETJARY   PASSIONS 

verse  with  tlicm  face  to  face.  My  mood  was  sufficiently 
foolish,  but  it  was  not  such  a  frame  of  mind  as  I  can  be 
ashamed  of;  and  I  could  wish  a  boy  no  happier  fortune 
than  to  possess  it  for  a  time,  at  least. 


XXIII 

TENNYSON 

I  CANNOT  quite  see  now  how  I  found  time  for  even 
trying  to  do  the  things  I  had  in  hand  more  or  less.  It 
is  perfectly  clear  to  me  that  I  did  none  of  them  well, 
though  I  meant  at  the  time  to  do  none  of  them  other 
than  excellently.  I  was  attempting  the  study  of  no  less 
than  four  languages,  and  I  presently  added  a  fifth  to 
these.  I  was  reading  right  and  left  in  every  direction, 
but  chiefly  in  that  of  poetry,  criticism,  and  fiction. 
From  time  to  time  I  boldly  attacked  a  history,  and  car- 
ried it  by  a  coup  de  main,  or  sat  down  before  it  for  a 
prolonged  siege.  There  was  occasionally  an  author  who 
worsted  me,  whom  I  tried  to  read  and  quietly  gave  up 
after  a  vain  struggle,  but  I  must  say  that  these  authors 
were  few.  I  had  got  a  very  fair  notion  of  the  range  of 
all  literature,  and  the  relations  of  the  different  litera- 
tures to  one  another,  and  I  knew  pretty  well  what  man- 
ner of  book  it  was  that  I  took  up  before  I  committed 
myself  to  the  task  of  reading  it.  Always  I  read  for 
pleasure,  for  the  delight  of  knowing  something  more; 
and  this  pleasure  is  a  very  different  thing  from  amuse- 
ment, though  I  read  a  great  deal  for  mere  amusement, 
as  I  do  still,  and  to  take  my  mind  away  from  unhappy  or 
harassing  thoughts.  There  are  very  few  things  that  I 
think  it  a  waste  of  time  to  have  read ;  I  should  probably 
have  wasted  the  time  if  I  had  not  read  them,  and  at  the 
period  I  speak  of  I  do  not  think  I  wasted  much  time. 

113 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

My  day  began  about  seven  o'clock,  in  the  printing- 
office,  where  it  took  me  till  noon  to  do  my  task  of  so 
many  thousand  ems,  say  four  or  five.  Then  we  had 
dinner,  after  the  simple  fashion  of  people  who  work 
with  their  hands  for  their  dinners.  In  the  afternoon 
I  went  back  and  corrected  the  proof  of  the  type  I  had 
set,  and  distributed  my  case  for  the  next  day.  At  two 
or  three  o'clock  I  was  free,  and  then  I  went  home  and 
began  my  studies ;  or  tried  to  write  something ;  or  read 
a  book.  We  had  supper  at  six,  and  after  that  I  rejoiced 
in  literature,  till  I  went  to  bed  at  ten  or  eleven.  I  can- 
not think  of  any  time  when  I  did  not  go  gladly  to  my 
books  or  manuscripts,  when  it  was  not  a  noble  joy  as 
well  as  a  high  privilege. 

But  it  all  ended  as  such  a  strain  must,  in  the  sort  of 
break  which  was  not  yet  known  as  nervous  prostration. 
"When  I  could  not  sleep  after  my  studies,  and  the  sick 
headaches  came  oftener,  and  then  days  and  weeks  of 
hypochondriacal  misery,  it  was  apparent  I  was  not  well ; 
but  that  was  not  the  day  of  anxiety  for  such  things, 
and  if  it  was  thought  best  that  I  should  leave  work  and 
study  for  a  while,  it  was  not  with  the  notion  that  the 
case  was  at  all  serious,  or  needed  an  uninterrupted  cure. 
I  passed  days  in  the  woods  and  fields,  gunning  or  pick- 
ing berries ;  I  spent  myself  in  heavy  work ;  I  made  little 
journeys;  and  all  this  was  very  wholesome  and  very 
well ;  but  I  did  not  give  up  my  reading  or  my  attempts 
to  write.  jSTo  doubt  I  was  secretly  proud  to  have  been 
invalided  in  so  great  a  cause,  and  to  be  sicklied  over  with 
the  pale  cast  of  thought,  rather  than  by  some  ignoble 
ague  or  the  devastating  consumption  of  that  region.  If 
I  lay  awake,  noting  the  wild  pulsations  of  my  heart,  and 
listening  to  the  death-watch  in  the  wall,  I  was  certainly 
very  much  scared,  but  I  was  not  without  the  consolation 
that  I  Avas  at  least  a  sufferer  for  literature.     At  the 

114 


TENNYSON 

same  time  that  I  was  so  horribly  afraid  of  dying,  I 
could  have  composed  an  epitaph  which  would  have 
moved  others  to  tears  for  my  untimely  fate.  But  there 
was  really  no  impairment  of  my  constitution,  and  after 
a  while  I  began  to  be  better,  and  little  by  little  the 
health  which  has  never  since  failed  me  imder  any 
reasonable  stress  of  work  established  itself. 

I  was  in  the  midst  of  this  unequal  struggle  when  I 
first  became  acquainted  with  the  poet  who  at  once  pos- 
sessed himself  of  what  was  best  worth  having  in  me. 
Probably  I  knew  of  Tennyson  by  extracts,  and  from 
the  English  reviews,  but  I  believe  it  was  from  reading 
one  of  Curtis's  "  Easy  Chair "  papers  that  I  was 
prompted  to  get  the  new  poem  of  "  Maud,"  which  I 
understood  from  the  "  Easy  Chair  "  was  then  moving 
polite  youth  in  the  East.  It  did  not  seem  to  me  that  I 
could  very  well  live  without  that  poem,  and  when  I 
went  to  Cleveland  with  the  hope  that  I  might  have 
courage  to  propose  a  translation  of  LazariUo  to  a  pub- 
lisher it  was  with  the  fixed  purpose  of  getting  "  Maud  " 
if  it  was  to  be  found  in  any  book-store  there. 

I  do  not  know  why  I  was  so  long  in  reaching  Tenny- 
son, and  I  can  only  account  for  it  by  the  fact  that  I  was 
always  reading  rather  the  earlier  than  the  later  English 
poetry.  To  be  sure  I  had  passed  through  what  I  may 
call  a  paroxysm  of  Alexander  Smith,  a  poet  deeply  un- 
known to  the  present  generation,  but  then  acclaimed 
immortal  by  all  the  critics,  and  put  with.  Shakespeare, 
who  must  be  a  good  deal  astonished  from  time  to  time 
in  his  Elysian  quiet  by  the  companionship  thrust  upon 
him.  I  read  this  now  dead-and-gone  immortal  with  an 
ecstasy  unspeakable ;  I  raved  of  him  by  day,  and  dream- 
ed of  him  by  night ;  I  got  great  lengths  of  his  "  Life- 
Drama"  by  heart,  and  I  can  still  repeat  several  gorgeous 
passages  from  it ;  I  would  almost  have  been  willing  to 

115 


MY  LITERARY  PASSTOXS 

take  tlic  life  of  the  sole  critic  who  had  the  sense  to  laugh 
at  him,  and  who  made  his  wicked  fnn  in  Grahnn's 
Magazine,  an  extinct  periodical  of  the  old  extinct  Phila- 
dclphian  species.  I  cannot  tell  how  I  came  out  of  this 
craze,  bnt  neither  could  any  of  the  critics  who  led  me 
into  it,  I  dare  say.  The  reading  world  is  very  sus- 
ceptible of  such  lunacies,  and  all  that  can  be  said  is  that 
at  a  given  time  it  was  time  for  criticism  to  go  mad  over  a 
poet  who  was  neither  better  nor  worse  than  many  an- 
other third-rate  poet  apotheosized  before  and  since. 
What  was  good  in  Smith  was  the  reflected  fire  of  the 
poets  who  had  a  vital  heat  in  them ;  and  it  was  by  mere 
chance  that  I  bathed  myself  in  his  second-hand  efful- 
gence. I  already  knew  pretty  well  the  origin  of  the 
Tennysonian  line  in  English  poetry;  Wordsworth,  and 
Keats,  and  Shelley ;  and  I  did  not  come  to  Tennyson's 
worship  a  sudden  convert,  but  my  devotion  to  him  was 
none  the  less  complete  and  exclusive.  Like  every  other 
great  poet  he  somehow  expressed  the  feelings  of  his  day, 
and  I  suppose  that  at  the  time  he  wrote  "  ]\Iaud  "  he  said 
more  fully  what  the  whole  English-speaking  race  were 
then  dimly  longing  to  utter  than  any  English  poet  who 
has  lived. 

One  need  not  question  the  greatness  of  Browning  in 
owning  the  fact  that  the  two  poets  of  his  day  who  pre- 
eminently voiced  their  generation  were  Tennyson  and 
Longfellow ;  though  Browning,  like  Emerson,  is  possibly 
now  more  modern  than  either.  However,  I  had  then 
nothing  to  do  with  Tennyson's  comparative  claim  on 
my  adoration  ;  there  was  for  the  time  no  parallel  for  him 
in  the  whole  range  of  literary  divinities  that  I  had 
bowed  the  knee  to.  Eor  that  while,  the  temple  was  not 
only  emptied  of  all  the  other  idols,  but  I  had  a  richly 
flattering  illusion  of  being  his  only  worshipper.  'SVlien 
I  came  to  the  sense  of  this  error,  it  was  with  the  belief 

lie 


TENNYSON 

lliat  jit  least  no  one  else  had  ever  appreciated  liini  so 
fully,  stood  so  (dose  to  him  iu  that  holy  of  holies  where 
he  wrought  his  miracles. 

I  sav  tawdrily  and  ineffectively  and  falsely  what  was 
a  very  precious  and  sacred  experience  with  me.  This 
great  poet  opened  to  me  a  whole  world  of  thinking  and 
feeling,  where  I  had  my  being  with  him  in  that  mystic 
intimacy  which  cannot  be  pnt  into  words.  I  at  once 
identified  myself  not  only  with  the  hero  of  the  poem, 
but  in  some  sort  with  the  poet  himself,  when  I  read 
"  ]\Iand  " ;  bitt  that  was  only  the  first  step  towards  the 
lasting  state  in  which  his  poetry  has  upon  the  whole 
been  more  to  me  than  that  of  any  other  poet.  I  have 
never  read  any  other  so  closely  and  continuously,  or 
read  myself  so  much  into  and  out  of  his  verse.  There 
have  been  times  and  moods  when  I  have  had  my  ques- 
tions, and  made  my  cavils,  and  when  it  seemed  to  me 
that  the  poet  was  less  than  I  had  thought  him ;  and  cer- 
tainly I  do  not  revere  equally  and  unreservedly  all  that 
he  has  written;  that  would  be  impossible.  But  when 
I  think  over  all  the  other  poets  I  have  read,  he  is  su- 
preme above  them  in  his  response  to  some  need  in  me 
that  he  has  satisfied  so  perfectly. 

Of  course,  "  Maud  "  seemed  to  me  the  finest  poem  I 
had  read,  up  to  that  time,  but  I  am  not  sure  that  thig 
conclusion  was  wholly  my  own ;  I  think  it  was  partially 
formed  for  me  by  the  admiration  of  the  poem  which  I 
felt  to  be  everjivhere  in  the  critical  atmosphere,  and 
which  had  already  penetrated  to  me.  I  did  not  like  all 
parts  of  it  equally  well,  and  some  parts  of  it  seemed 
thin  and  poor  (though  I  would  not  suffer  myself  to  say 
so  then),  and  they  still  seem  so.  But  there  were  whole 
passages  and  spaces  of  it  whose  divine  and  perfect 
beauty  lifted  me  above  life.  I  did  not  fully  understand 
the  poem  then;  I  do  not  fullv  understand  it  now,  but 

117/ 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

that  did  not  and  does  not  matter ;  for  there  is  something 
in  poetry  that  reaches  the  soul  bj  other  avenues  than 
the  intelligence.  Both  in  this  poem  and  others  of 
Tennyson,  and  in  every  poet  that  I  have  loved,  there 
are  melodies  and  harmonies  enfolding  a  significance 
tliat  appeared  long  after  I  had  first  read  them,  aiid  had 
even  learned  them  by  heart;  that  lay  sweetly  in  my 
onter  ear  and  were  enough  in  their  mere  beauty  of 
phrasing,  till  the  time  came  for  them  to  reveal  their 
whole  meaning.  In  fact  they  could  do  this  only  to  later 
and  greater  knowledge  of  myself  and  others,  as  every 
one  must  recognize  who  recurs  in  after-life  to  a  book 
that  he  read  when  young ;  then  he  finds  it  twice  as  full 
of  meaning  as  it  was  at  first. 

I  could  not  rest  satisfied  with  "  Maud  " ;  I  sent  the 
same  summer  to  Cleveland  for  the  little  volume  which 
then  held  all  the  poet's  work,  and  abandoned  myself 
so  wholly  to  it,  that  for  a  year  I  read  no  other  verse 
that  I  can  remember.  The  volume  was  the  first  of 
that  pretty  blue-and-gold  series  which  Ticknor  &  Fields 
began  to  publish  in  1856,  and  which  their  imprint,  so 
rarely  afiixed  to  an  unworthy  book,  at  once  carried  far 
and  wide.  Their  modest  old  brown  cloth  binding  had 
long  been  a  quiet  warrant  of  quality  in  the  literature 
it  covered,  and  now  this  splendid  blossom  of  the  book- 
making  art,  as  it  seemed,  was  fitly  employed  to  convey 
the  sweetness  and  richness  of  the  loveliest  poetry  that  I 
thought  the  world  had  yet  known.  After  an  old  fashion 
of  mine,  I  read  it  continuously,  with  frequent  recur- 
rences from  each  new  poem  to  some  that  had  already 
pleased  me,  and  with  a  most  capricious  range  among  the 
pieces.  "  In  Memoriam  "  was  in  that  book,  and  the 
"  Princess  " ;  I  read  the  "  Princess  "  through  and 
through,  and  over  and  over,  but  I  did  not  then  read  "  In 
Memoriam "   through,   and   I   have   never   read   it   in 

118 


TENNYSON 

course ;  I  am  not  sure  that  I  have  even  yet  read  every 
part  of  it.  I  did  not  come  to  the  "  Princess,"  either, 
until  I  had  saturated  my  fancy  and  my  memory  with 
some  of  the  shorter  poems,  with  the  "  Dream  of  Fair 
AVomen,"  with  the  "  Lotus-Eaters,"  with  the  "  Miller's 
Daughter,"  with  the  "  :aiorte  d' Arthur,"  with  "  Edwin 
Morris,  or  The  Lake,"  with  "  Love  and  Duty,"  and 
a  score  of  other  minor  and  briefer  poems.  I  read  the 
book  night  and  day,  in-doors  and  out,  to  myself  and  to 
whomever  I  could  make  listen.  I  have  no  words  to 
tell  the  rapture  it  was  to  me ;  but  I  hope  that  in  some 
more  articulate  being,  if  it  should  ever  be  my  unmer- 
ited fortune  to  meet  that  somnio  poeta  face  to  face,  it 
shall  somehow  be  uttered  from  me  to  him,  and  he  will 
understand  how  completely  he  became  the  life  of  the 
boy  I  was  then.  I  think  it  might  please,  or  at  least 
amuse,  that  lofty  ghost,  and  that  he  would  not  resent 
it,  as  he  would  probably  have  done  on  earth.  I  can 
well  understand  why  the  homage  of  his  worshippers 
should  have  afflicted  him  here,  and  I  could  never  have 
been  one  to  burn  incense  in  his  earthly  presence;  but 
perhaps  it  might  be  done  hereafter  without  offence.  I 
eagerly  caught  up  and  treasured  every  personal  word  I 
could  find  about  him,  and  I  dwelt  in  that  sort  of  charmed 
intimacy  with  him  through  his  verse,  in  which  I  could 
not  presume  nor  he  repel,  and  wdiich  I  had  enjoyed  in 
turn  with  Cervantes  and  Shakespeare,  without  a  snub 
from  them. 

I  have  never  ceased  to  adore  Tennyson,  though  the 
rapture  of  the  new  convert  could  not  last.  That  must 
pass  like  the  flush  of  any  other  passion.  I  think  I 
have  now  a  better  sense  of  his  comparative  greatness, 
but  a  better  sense  of  his  positive  greatness  I  could  not 
have  than  I  had  at  the  beginning;  and  I  believe  this 
is  the  essential  knowledge  of  a  poet.     It  is  very  well 

119 


MY  LITERARY  Px\SSIONS 

to  say  one  is  j^rcater  than  Keats,  or  not  so  great  as 
Wordsworth ;  that  one  is  or  is  not  of  the  highest  order 
of  poets  like  Shakespeare  and  Dante  and  Goethe;  but 
that  does  not  mean  anything  of  value,  and  I  never 
find  my  account  in  it.  I  know  it  is  not  possible  for  any 
less  than  the  greatest  writer  to  abide  lastingly  in  one's 
life.  Some  dazzling  comer  may  enter  and  possess  it 
for  a  day,  but  he  soon  wears  his  welcome  out,  and  pres- 
ently finds  the  door,  to  be  answered  with  a  not-at-home 
if  he  knocks  again.  But  it  was  only  this  morning  that 
I  read  one  of  the  new  last  poems  of  Tennyson  wdtli  a 
return  of  the  emotion  which  he  first  woke  in  me  well- 
nigh  forty  years  ago.  There  has  been  no  year  of  those 
many  when  I  have  not  read  him  and  loved  him  with 
something  of  the  early  fire  if  not  all  the  early  conflagra- 
tion ;  and  each  successive  poem  of  his  has  been  for  me  a 
fresh  joy. 

He  went  with  me  into  the  world  from  my  village 
when  I  left  it  to  make  my  first  venture  away  from  home. 
My  father  had  got  one  of  those  legislative  clerkships 
which  used  to  fall  sometimes  to  deserving  country 
editors  when  their  party  was  in  power,  and  we  together 
imagined  and  carried  out  a  scheme  for  corresponding 
wdth  some  city  newspapers.  We  were  to  furnish  a  daily 
letter  giving  an  account  of  the  legislative  proceedings 
which  I  was  mainly  to  write  up  from  material  he  helped 
me  to  get  together.  The  letters  at  once  found  favor  with 
the  editors  who  agreed  to  take  them,  and  my  father  then 
withdrew  from  the  work  altogether,  after  telling  them 
who  was  doing  it.  We  were  afraid  they  might  not  care 
for  the  reports  of  a  boy  of  nineteen,  but  they  did  not 
seem  to  take  my  age  into  account,  and  T  did  not  boast 
of  my  youth  among  the  law-makers.  I  looked  three  or 
four  years  older  than  T  was ;  but  I  experienced  a  terrible 
moment  once  when  a  fatlierly  Senator  asked  me  my 

120 


TENNYSON 

age.  I  got  away  somehow  without  saying,  but  it  was  a 
great  relief  to  me  when  m}'  twentieth  hirthdiiy  came  that 
winter,  and  1  eoiiIJ  honestly  proclaim  tliat  I  was  in  my 
twenty-first  year. 

I  had  noM-  the  free  range  of  tlio  State  Library,  and 
I  drew  many  sorts  of  books  from  it.  Largely,  how- 
ever, they  were  fiction,  and  I  read  all  tlic  novels  of 
Bulwer,  for  whom  I  had  already  a  great  liking  from 
The  Caxtons  and  My  Novel.  I  was  dazzled  by  them, 
and  I  thought  him  a  great  writer,  if  not  so  great  a  one 
as  he  thought  himself.  Little  or  nothing  of  those  ro- 
mances, with  their  swelling  prefaces  about  the  poet 
and  his  function,  their  glittering  criminals,  and  showy 
rakes  and  rogues  of  all  kinds,  and  their  patrician  per- 
fume and  social  splendor,  remained  with  me ;  they  may 
have  been  better  or  w^orse ;  I  will  not  attempt  to  say. 
If  I  may  call  my  fascination  with  them  a  passion  at  all, 
I  must  say  that  it  was  but  a  fitful  fever.  I  also  read 
many  volumes  of  Zschokke's  admirable  tales,  which  I 
found  in  a  translation  in  the  Library,  and  I  think  I 
began  at  the  same  time  to  find  out  De  Quincey.  These 
authors  I  recall  out  of  the  many  that  passed  through 
my  mind  almost  as  tracelessly  as  they  passed  through 
my  hands.  I  got  at  some  versions  of  Icelandic  poems, 
in  the  metre  of  "  Hiawatha  " ;  I  had  for  a  while  a  notion 
of  studying  Icelandic,  and  I  did  take  out  an  Icelandia 
grammar  and  lexicon,  and  decided  that  I  would  learn 
the  language  later.  By  this  time  I  must  have  begun 
German,  which  I  afterwards  carried  so  far,  with  one 
author  at  least,  as  to  find  in  him  a  delight  only  second 
to  that  I  had  in  Tennyson;  but  as  yet  Tennyson  was 
all  in  all  to  me  in  poetry.  I  suspect  that  I  carried  his 
poems  about  with  me  a  great  part  of  the  time;  I  am 
afraid  that  I  always  had  that  blue-and-gold  Tennyson 
in  my  pocket ;  and  I  was  ready  to  draw  it  upon  anybody 

121 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

at  tlie  slightest  provocation.  This  is  the  worst  of  tlie 
ardent  lover  of  literature:  he  wishes  to  make  every 
one  else  share  his  rapture,  will  he,  nill  he.  Many  good 
fellows  suffered  from  my  admiration  of  this  author  or 
that,  and  many  more  pretty,  patient  maids.  I  wanted 
to  read  ni}'  favorite  passages,  my  favorite  poems  to 
them;  I  am  afraid  I  often  did  read,  when  they  would 
rather  have  been  talking;  in  the  case  of  the  poems  I 
did  worse,  I  repeated  them.  This  seems  rather  in- 
credible now,  but  it  is  true  enough,  and  absurd  as  it 
is,  it  at  least  attests  my  sincerity.  It  was  long  before 
I  cured  myself  of  so  pestilent  a  habit;  and  I  am  not 
3'et  so  perfectly  well  of  it  that  I  could  be  safely  trusted 
with  a  fascinating  book  and  a  submissive  listener. 

I  dare  say  I  could  not  have  been  made  to  understand 
at  this  time  that  Tennyson  was  not  so  nearly  the  first 
interest  of  life  with  other  people  as  he  was  with  me;  I 
must  often  have  suspected  it,  but  I  was  helpless  against 
the  wish  to  make  them  feel  him  as  important  to  their 
prosperity  and  well-being  as  he  was  to  mine.  My  head 
was  full  of  him ;  his  words  were  always  behind  my  lips ; 
and  when  I  was  not  repeating  his  phrase  to  myself  or 
to  some  one  else,  I  was  trying  to  frame  something  of 
my  own  as  like  him  as  I  could.  It  was  a  time  of  melan- 
choly from  ill-health,  and  of  anxiety  for  the  future  in 
which  I  must  make  my  own  place  in  the  world.  Work, 
and  hard  work,  I  had  always  been  used  to  and  never 
afraid  of;  but  work  is  by  no  means  the  whole  story. 
You  may  get  on  without  much  of  it,  or  you  may  do  a 
great  deal,  and  not  get  on.  I  was  willing  to  do  as  much 
of  it  as  I  could  get  to  do,  but  I  distrusted  my  health, 
somewhat,  and  I  had  many  forebodings,  which  my 
adored  poet  helped  me  to  transfigure  to  the  substance  of 
literature,  or  enabled  me  for  the  time  to  forget.  I  was 
already  imitating  him  in  the  verse  I  wrote;  he  now 

122 


TENNYSON 

seemed  tlic  only  worthy  model  for  one  "who  meant  to  be 
as  great  a  poet  as  I  did.  Xone  of  the  authors  whom  I 
read  at  all  displaced  him  in  my  devotion,  and  I  could 
not  have  believed  that  any  other  poet  would  ever  be  so 
much  to  me.  In  fact,  as  I  have  expressed,  none  ever  has 
been. 


XXIV 

HEINE 

That  winter  passed  very  quickly  and  happily  for 
me,  and  at  the  end  of  the  legislative  session  I  had 
acqnitted  inyself  so  mnch  to  the  satisfaction  of  one  of 
the  newspapers  which  I  wrote  for  that  I  was  offered  a 
place  on  it.  I  was  asked  to  be  city  editor,  as  it  was 
called  in  that  day,  and  I  was  to  have  charge  of  the 
local  reporting.  It  was  a  great  temptation,  and  for  a 
while  I  thought  it  the  greatest  piece  of  good  fortune. 
I  went  down  to  Cincinnati  to  acquaint  myself  with  the 
details  of  the  work,  and  to  fit  myself  for  it  by  begin- 
ning as  reporter  myself.  One  night's  round  of  the 
police  stations  with  the  other  reporters  satisfied  me 
that  I  was  not  meant  for  that  work,  and  I  attempted 
it  no  farther.  I  have  often  been  sorry  since,  for  it 
would  have  made  knovv'n  to  me  many  phases  of  life 
that  I  have  always  remained  ignorant  of,  but  I  did  not 
know  then  that  life  was  supremely  interesting  and  im- 
portant. I  fancied  that  literature,  that  poetry  was  so; 
and  it  was  humiliation  and  anguish  indescribable  to 
think  of  myself  torn  from  my  higli  ideals  by  labors 
like  those  of  the  reporter.  I  would  not  consent  even 
to  do  the  office  work  of  the  department,  and  the  pro- 
prietor and  editor  who  was  more  especially  my  friend 
tried  to  make  some  other  place  for  me.  All  the  depart- 
ments were  full  but  the  one  I  would  have  nothing  to  do 
with,  and  after  a  few  weeks  of  sufferance  and  suffering  I 

124 


HEINE 

turned  my  back  on  a  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  for 
the  second  time  returned  to  the  printin{]^-office. 

I  was  glad  to  get  home,  for  I  had  been  all  the  time 
tormented  by  my  old  malady  of  homesickness.  But 
otherwise  the  situation  was  not  cheerful  for  me,  and  I 
now  began  trying  to  write  something  for  publication 
that  I  could  sell.  I  sent  off  poems  and  they  came 
back ;  T  offered  little  translations  from  the  Spanish 
that  nobody  wanted.  At  the  same  time  I  took  up  the 
study  of  German,  which  I  must  have  already  played 
with,  at  such  odd  times  as  I  could  find.  My  father 
knew  something  of  it,  and  that  friend  of  mine  among 
the  printers  was  already  reading  it  and  trying  to 
speak  it.  I  had  their  help  with  the  first  steps  so  far 
as  the  recitations  from  Ollendorff  were  concerned,  but 
I  was  impatient  to  read  German,  or  rather  to  read  one 
German  poet  who  had  seized  my  fancy  from  the  first 
line  of  his  I  had  seen. 

This  poet  was  Heinrich  Heine,  who  dominated  me 
longer  than  any  one  author  that  I  have  known.  Where 
or  when  I  first  acquainted  myself  with  his  most  fasci- 
nating genius,  I  cannot  be  sure,  but  I  think  it  was  in 
some  article  of  the  West7ninsfer  Review^  where  several 
poems  of  his  were  given  in  English  and  German;  and 
their  singular  beauty  and  grace  at  once  possessed  my 
soul.  I  was  in  a  fever  to  know  more  of  him,  and  it 
was  my  great  good  luck  to  fall  in  with  a  German  in 
the  village  who  had  his  books.  He  w^as  a  bookbinder, 
one  of  those  educated  artisans  whom  the  revolutions  of 
1848  sent  to  us  in  great  numbers.  He  was  a  Hano- 
verian, and  his  accent  was  then,  I  believe,  the  standard, 
though  the  Berlinese  is  now  the  accepted  pronuncia- 
tion. But  I  cared  very  little  for  accent;  my  wish  was 
to  get  at  Heine  with  as  little  delay  as  possible;  and  I 
])egan  to  cultivate  the  friendship  of  that  bookbinder 
^9  125 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

in  every  way.  I  dare  say  he  was  glad  of  mine,  for  he 
was  otherwise  quite  alone  in  the  village,  or  had  no 
companionship  outside  of  his  own  family.  I  clothed 
him  in  all  the  romantic  interest  I  began  to  feel  for  his 
race  and  language,  which  now  took  the  place  of  the 
Spaniards  and  Spanish  in  my  affections.  He  was  a 
very  quick  and  gay  intelligence,  with  more  sympathy 
for  my  love  of  our  author's  humor  than  for  my  love 
of  his  sentiment,  and  I  can  remember  very  well  the 
twinkle  of  his  little  sharp  black  eyes,  with  their  Tar- 
tar slant,  and  the  twitching  of  his  keenly  pointed,  sensi- 
tive nose,  when  we  came  to  some  passage  of  biting 
satire,  or  some  phrase  in  which  the  bitter  Jew  had  un- 
packed all  the  insult  of  his  soul. 

We  began  to  read  Heine  together  when  my  vocab- 
ulary had  to  be  dug  almost  word  by  word  out  of  the 
dictionary,  for  the  bookbinder's  English  was  rather 
scanty  at  the  best,  and  was  not  literary.  As  for  the 
grammar,  T  was  getting  that  up  as  fast  as  I  could 
from  Ollendorff,  and  from  other  sources,  but  I  was 
enjoying  Heine  before  I  well  knew  a  declension  or  a 
conjugation.  As  soon  as  my  task  was  done  at  the 
office,  I  went  home  to  the  books,  and  worked  away  at 
them  until  supper.  Then  my  bookbinder  and  I  met 
in  my  father's  editorial  room,  and  with  a  couple  of 
candles  on  the  table  between  ua,  and  our  Heine  and 
the  dictionary  before  us,  we  read  till  we  were  both 
tired  out. 

The  candles  were  tallow,  and  they  lopped  at  differ- 
ent angles  in  the  flat  candlesticks  heavily  loaded  with 
lead,  which  compositors  once  used.  It  seems  to  have 
been  summer  when  our  readings  began,  and  they  are 
associated  in  my  memory  with  the  smell  of  the  neigh- 
boring gardens,  which  came  in  at  the  open  doors  and 
windows,  and  with  the  fluttering  of  moths,  and  the 

126 


^^^^^^^^^^^^^1^^^^     ' 

UPHI^^^H 

^^^^^^^^^i{; 

jJlrSJ^       ^^^^^^H 

^^^^^^^^^^B^^"' 

p^'^Rk     '^^^^^^1 

1        ■  ^i^^^^^^^^l 

^^Hl 

l^f'f  ^^^^^H 

^^1 

K^Jg^H 

1^1 

^ft.  ^^^^^i^^^^^^^^^i 

hI 

n 

^^^^I^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H 

HEINE 

bumbling  of  the  dorbiigs,  that  stole  in  along  with  tlio 
odors.  I  can  see  the  perspiration  on  the  shining  fore- 
head of  the  bookbinder  as  he  looks  np  from  some  brill- 
iant passage,  to  exchange  a  smile  of  triumph  with  me  at 
having  made  out  the  meaning  with  the  meagre  facili- 
ties we  had  for  the  purpose;  he  had  beautiful  red 
pouting  lips,  and  a  stiff  little  branching  mustache  above 
them,  that  went  to  the  making  of  his  smile.  Sometimes, 
in  the  truce  we  made  with  the  text,  he  told  a  little  story 
of  his  life  at  home,  or  some  anecdote  relevant  to  our 
reading,  or  quoted  a  passage  from  some  other  author. 
It  seemed  to  me  the  make  of  a  high  intellectual  banquet, 
and  I  should  be  glad  if  I  could  enjoy  anything  as  much 
now. 

We  walked  home  as  far  as  his  house,  or  rather  his 
apartment  over  one  of  the  village  stores;  and  as  he 
mounted  to  it  by  an  outside  staircase,  we  exchanged 
a  joyous  "  Gute  Nacht,"  and  I  kept  on  homeward 
through  the  dark  and  silent  village  street,  which  was 
really  not  that  street,  but  some  other,  where  Heine  had 
been,  some  street  out  of  the  Reisebilder,  of  his  knowl- 
edge, or  of  his  dream.  When  I  reached  home  it  was 
useless  to  go  to  bed.  I  shut  myself  into  my  little  study, 
and  went  over  what  we  had  read,  till  my  brain  was 
so  full  of  it  that  when  I  crept  up  to  my  room  at  last, 
it  was  to  lie  do\vn  to  slumbers  which  were  often  a  mere 
phantasmagory  of  those  witching  Pictures  of  Travel. 

I  was  awake  at  my  father's  call  in  the  morning,  and 
before  my  mother  had  breakfast  ready  I  had  recited 
my  lesson  in  Ollendorff  to  him.  To  tell  the  truth,  I 
hated  those  grammatical  studies,  and  nothing  but  the 
love  of  literature,  and  the  hope  of  getting  at  it,  could 
ever  have  made  me  go  through  them.  I^Taturally,  I 
never  got  any  scholarly  use  of  the  languages  I  was 
worrying  at,  and  though  I  could  once  write  a  passable 

127 


MT  LITERARY  PASSIONS 

literary  German,  it  lias  all  gone  from  me  now,  except 
for  the  purposes  of  reading.  It  cost  me  so  much 
trouble,  however,  to  dig  the  sense  out  of  the  granmiar 
and  lexicon,  as  I  went  on  with  the  authors  I  was  im- 
patient to  read,  that  I  remember  the  words  very  w(;ll 
in  all  their  forms  and  inflections,  and  I  have  still  what 
I  think  I  may  call  a  fair  German  vocabulary. 

The  German  of  Heine,  when  once  you  are  in  the 
joke  of  his  capricious  genius,  is  very  simple,  and  in 
his  poetry  it  is  simple  from  the  first,  so  that  he  was, 
perhaps,  the  best  author  I  could  have  fallen  in  with 
if  I  wanted  to  go  fast  rather  than  far.  I  found  this 
out  later,  when  I  attempted  other  German  authors 
without  the  glitter  of  his  wit  or  the  lambent  glow  of 
his  fancy  to  light  me  on  my  hard  way.  I  should  find 
it  hard  to  say  just  why  his  peculiar  genius  had  such 
an  absolute  fascination  for  me  from  the  very  first,  and 
perhaps  I  had  better  content  myself  with  saying  simply 
that  my  literary  liberation  began  with  almost  the 
earliest  word  from  him;  for  if  he  chained  me  to  him- 
self he  freed  me  from  all  other  bondage.  I  had  been 
at  infinite  pains  from  time  to  time,  now  upon  one  model 
and  now  upon  another,  to  literarify  myself,  if  I  may 
make  a  word  which  does  not  quite  say  the  thing  for  me. 
What  I  mean  is  that  I  had  supposed,  witli  the  sense  at 
times  that  I  was  all  wrong,  that  the  expression  of  litera- 
ture must  be  difi'erent  from  the  expression  of  life ;  that 
it  must  be  an  attitude,  a  pose,  with  something  of  state 
or  at  least  of  formality  in  it ;  that  it  must  be  this  style, 
and  not  that;  that  it  must  be  like  that  sort  of  acting 
which  you  know  is  acting  when  you  see  it  and  never  mis- 
take for  reality.  There  are  a  great  many  children, 
apparently  grown-up,  and  largely  accepted  as  critical 
authorities,  who  are  still  of  this  youthful  opinion  of 
mine.     But  Heine  at  once  showed  me  that  this  ideal 

128i 


HEINE 

of  literature  was  false;  that  the  life  of  literature  was 
from  the  springs  of  the  best  common  speech,-  and  that 
the  nearer  it  could  be  made  to  conform,  in  voice,  look, 
and  gait,  to  graceful,  easy,  picturesque  and  humorous 
or  impassioned  talk,  the  better  it  was. 

lie  did  not  impart  these  truths  without  imparting 
certain  tricks  with  them,  which  I  was  careful  to  imitate 
as  soon  as  I  began  to  write  in  his  manner,  that  is  to 
say  instantly.  His  tricks  he  had  mostly  at  second-hand, 
and  mainly  from  Sterne,  whom  I  did  not  know  well 
enough  then  to  know  their  origin.  But  in  all  essentials 
he  was  himself,  and  my  final  lesson  from  him,  or  the 
final  effect  of  all  my  lessons  from  him,  was  to  find 
myself,  and  to  be  for  good  or  evil  whatsoever  I  really 
was. 

I  kept  on  writing  as  much  like  Heine  as  I  could  for 
several  years,  though,  and  for  a  much  longer  time  than 
I  should  have  done  if  I  had  ever  become  equally  impas- 
sioned of  any  other  author.  Some  traces  of  his  method 
lingered  so  long  in  my  work  that  nearly  ten  years  after- 
wards Mr.  Lowell  wrote  me  about  something  of  mine 
that  he  had  been  reading :  "  You  must  sweat  the  Heine 
out  of  your  bones  as  men  do  mercury,"  and  his  kind- 
ness for  me  would  not  be  content  with  less  than  the 
entire  expulsion  of  the  poison  that  had  in  its  good  time 
saved  my  life.  I  dare  say  it  was  all  well  enough  not  to 
have  it  in  my  bones  after  it  had  done  its  office,  but  it 
did  do  its  office. 

It  was  in  some  prose  sketch  of  mine  that  his  keen 
analysis  had  found  the  Heine,  but  the  foreigTi  property 
had  been  so  prevalent  in  my  earlier  work  in  verse  that 
he  kept  the  first  contribution  he  accepted  from  me 
for  the  Atlantic  MontJihj  a  long  time,  or  long  enough 
to  make  sure  that  it  was  not  a  translation  of  Heine. 
Then  he  printed  it,  and  I  am  bound  to  say  that  the  poem 

129 


MY   LITERARY  PASSIONS 

now  justifies  his  doubt  to  me,  in  so  much  that  I  do  not 
see  Avhy  Heine  should  not  have  had  the  name  of  writing 
it  if  he  had  wanted.  His  potent  spirit  became  immedi- 
ateh^  so  wholly  my  "  control,"  as  the  mediums  say,  that 
my  poems  might  as  well  have  been  communications  from 
him  so  far  as  any  authority  of  my  own  was  concerned ; 
and  they  were  quite  like  other  inspirations  from  the 
other  world  in  being  so  inferior  to  the  work  of  the 
spirit  before  it  had  the  misfortune  to  be  disembodied 
and  obliged  to  use  a  medium.  But  I  do  not  think  that 
either  Heine  or  I  had  much  lasting  harm  from  it,  and 
I  am  sure  that  the  good,  in  my  case  at  least,  was  one  that 
can  only  end  with  me.  He  undid  my  hands,  which  I 
had  taken  so  much  pains  to  tie  behind  my  back,  and  he 
forever  persuaded  me  that  though  it  may  be  ingenious 
and  surprising  to  dance  in  chains,  it  is  neither  pretty 
nor  useful. 


XXV 

DE  QUINCEY,  GOETHE,  LONGFELLOW 

Another  author  who  was  a  prime  favorite  with  me 
about  this  time  was  De  Quincey,  whose  books  I  took 
out  of  the  State  Library,  one  after  another,  until  I  had 
read  them  alh  We  who  were  young  people  of  that 
day  thought  his  style  something  wonderful,  and  so  in- 
deed it  was,  especially  in  those  passages,  abundant 
everywhere  in  his  work,  relating  to  his  own  life  with 
an  intimacy  which  was  always  more  rather  than  less. 
His  rhetoric  there,  and  in  certain  of  his  historical 
studies,  had  a  sort  of  luminous  richness,  without  losing 
its  colloquial  ease.  I  keenly  enjoyed  this  subtle  spirit, 
and  the  play  of  that  brilliant  intelligence  which  lighted 
up  so  many  ways  of  literature  with  its  lambent  glow 
or  its  tricksy  glimmer,  and  I  had  a  deep  sympathy  with 
certain  morbid  moods  and  experiences  so  like  my  own, 
as  I  was  pleased  to  fancy.  I  have  not  looked  at  his 
Twelve  Ccesars  for  twice  as  many  years,  but  I  should 
be  greatly  surprised  to  find  it  other  than  one  of  the 
greatest  historical  monographs  ever  written.  His  liter- 
ary criticisms  seemed  to  me  not  only  exquisitely  humor- 
ous, but  perfectly  sane  and  just;  and  it  delighted  me 
to  have  him  personally  present,  with  the  warmth  of  his 
own  temperament  in  regions  of  cold  abstraction;  I  am 
not  sure  that  I  should  like  that  so  much  now.  De 
Quincey  was  hardly  less  autobiographical  when  he  wrote 
of  Kant,  or  the  Flight  of  the  Crim-Tartars,  than  when 

131 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

lie  wrote  of  his  own  boyhood  or  the  miseries  of  the  opium 
habit.  He  had  the  hospitable  gift  of  making  you  at 
home  with  him,  and  appealing  to  your  sense  of  com- 
radery  with  something  of  the  flattering  confidentiality 
of  Thackeray,  but  with  a  Avholly  different  effect. 

In  fact,  although  De  Qnincey  was  from  time  to  time 
perfunctorily  Tory,  and  always  a  good  and  faithful 
British  subject,  he  was  so  eliminated  from  his  time  and 
place  by  his  single  love  for  books,  that  one  could  be  in 
his  company  through  the  whole  vast  range  of  his  writ- 
ings, and  come  away  without  a  touch  of  snobbishness; 
and  that  is  saying  a  great  deal  for  an  English  writer. 
He  was  a  great  little  creature,  and  through  his  intense 
personality  he  achieved  a  sort  of  impersonality,  so  that 
you  loved  the  man,  who  was  forever  talking  of  himself, 
for  his  modesty  and  reticence.  He  left  you  feeling 
intimate  with  him  but  by  no  means  familiar;  with  all 
his  frailties,  and  with  all  those  freedoms  he  permitted 
himself  with  the  lives  of  his  contemporaries,  he  is  to  me 
a  figure  of  delicate  dignity,  and  winning  kindness.  I 
think  it  a  misfortune  for  the  present  generation  that 
his  books  have  fallen  into  a  kind  of  neglect,  and  I  be- 
lieve that  they  will  emerge  from  it  again  to  the  advan- 
tage of  literature. 

In  spite  of  Heine  and  Tennyson,  De  Qnincey  had  a 
large  place  in  my  affections,  though  this  was  perhaps 
because  he  was  not  a  poet;  for  more  than  those  two 
great  poets  there  was  then  not  much  room.  I  read  him 
the  first  winter  I  was  at  Columbus,  and  when  I  went 
down  from  the  village  the  next  M'iuter,  to  take  up  my 
legislative  correspondence  again,  I  read  him  more  than 
ever.  But  that  was  destined  to  be  for  me  a  very  dis- 
heartening time.  T  had  just  passed  through  a  rheumatic 
fever,  which  left  my  health  more  broken  than  before, 
and  one  morning  shortly  after  I  was  settled    iji   the 

132 


DE  QUINCEY,   GOETHE,   LONGFELLOW 

capital,  I  wckc  to  find  the  room  goin^  roiuid  luc  like  a 
wheel.  It  was  the  boginiiiug  of  a  vertigo  which  Uisted 
for  .six  months,  and  whicli  I  began  to  fight  with  varions 
devices  and  ninst  yield  to  at  last.  I  tried  medicine  and 
exercise,  but  it  was  useless,  and  my  father  came  to 
take  my  letters  off  my  hands  while  I  gave  myself  some 
ineffectual  respites.  I  made  a  little  journey  to  my  old 
home  in  southern  Ohio,  but  there  and  everywhere,  the 
sure  and  firm-set  earth  waved  and  billowed  under  my 
feet,  and  I  came  back  to  Cohnnbus  and  tried  to  forget 
in  my  work  the  fact  that  I  was  no  better.  I  did  not 
give  up  trying  to  read,  as  usual,  and  part  of  my  en- 
deavor that  winter  was  with  Schiller,  and  Ilhland,  and 
even  Goethe,  whose  Wahlverwandschaften  hardly  yield- 
ed up  its  mystery  to  me.  To  tell  the  truth,  I  do  not 
think  that  I  found  my  account  in  that  novel.  It  must 
needs  be  a  disappointment  after  Wilhelm  Meister, 
wdiich  I  had  read  in  English ;  but  I  dare  say  my  dis- 
appointment was  largely  my  own  fault ;  I  had  certainly 
no  right  to  expect  such  constant  proofs  and  instances  of 
wisdom  in  Goethe  as  the  unwisdom  of  his  critics  had 
led  me  to  hope  for.  I  remember  little  or  nothing  of  the 
story,  wdiich  I  tried  to  find  very  memorable,  as  I  held 
my  sick  way  through  it.  Longfellow's  "  Miles  Stand- 
ish  "  came  out  that  winter,  and  I  suspect  that  I  got 
vastly  more  real  pleasure  from  that  one  poem  of  his  than 
I  found  in  all  my  German  authors  put  together,  the 
adored  Heine  always  excepted ;  though  certainly  I  felt 
the  romantic  beauty  of  Uhland,  and  was  aware  of  some- 
thing of  Schiller's  generous  grandeur. 

Of  the  American  writers  Longfellow  has  been  most 
a  passion  with  me,  as  the  English,  and  German,  and 
Spanish,  and  Russian  writers  have  been.  I  am  sure 
that  this  was  largely  by  mere  chance.  It  was  because 
I  happened,  in  such  a  frame  and  at  such  a  time,  to 

133 


MY  LITERARY   PASSIONS 

come  upon  his  books  that  I  loved  them  above  those  of 
other  men  as  great.  I  am  perfectly  sensible  that  Lowell 
and  Emerson  outvalue  many  of  the  poets  and  prophets 
I  have  given  my  heart  to;  I  have  read  them  with  de- 
light and  with  a  deep  sense  of  their  greatness,  and  yet 
they  have  not  been  my  life  like  those  other,  those  lesser, 
men.  But  none  of  the  passions  are  reasoned,  and  I  do 
not  try  to  account  for  my  literary  preferences  or  to 
justify  them. 

I  dragged  along  through  several  months  of  that  win- 
ter, and  did  my  best  to  carry  out  that  notable  scheme 
of  not  minding  my  vertigo.  I  tried  doing  half-work, 
and  helping  my  father  with  the  correspondence,  but 
when  it  appeared  that  nothing  would  avail,  he  remained 
in  charge  of  it,  till  the  close  of  the  session,  and  I  went 
home  to  try  what  a  complete  and  prolonged  rest  would 
do  for  me.  I  was  not  fit  for  work  in  the  printing-office, 
but  that  w^as  a  simpler  matter  than  the  literary  work 
that  was  always  tempting  me.  I  could  get  away  from  it 
only  by  taking  my  gun  and  tramping  day  after  day 
through  the  deep,  primeval  woods.  The  fatigue  was 
wholesome,  and  I  was  so  bad  a  shot  that  no  other  crea- 
ture suffered  loss  from  my  gain  except  one  hapless  wild 
pigeon.  The  thawing  snow  left  the  fallen  beechnuts 
of  the  autumn  before  uncovered  among  the  dead  leaves, 
and  the  forest  was  full  of  the  beautiful  birds.  In  most 
parts  of  the  middle  West  they  are  no  longer  seen,  except 
in  twos  or  threes,  but  once  they  were  like  the  sands  of 
the  sea  for  multitude.  It  was  not  now  the  season  when 
they  hid  half  the  heavens  with  their  flight  day  after  day ; 
but  they  were  in  myriads  all  through  the  woods,  where 
their  iridescent  breasts  shone  like  a  sudden  untimely 
growth  of  flowers  when  you  came  upon  them  from  the 
front.  When  they  rose  in  fright,  it  was  like  the  upward 
leap  of  fire,  and  with  the  roar  of  flame.     I  use  images 

134 


DE   QUINCEY,   GOETHE,  LONGFELLOW 

which,  after  all,  are  false  to  the  thing  I  wish  to  express; 
but  they  must  serve.  I  tried  honestly  enough  to  kill  the 
pigeons,  but  I  had  no  luck,  or  too  much,  till  I  happened 
to  bring  down  one  of  a  pair  that  I  found  apart  from  the 
rest  in  a  lofty  tree-top.  The  poor  creature  I  had  wid- 
owed followed  me  to  the  verge  of  the  woods,  as  I  started 
home  with  my  prey,  and  I  do  not  care  to  know  more  per- 
sonally the  feelings  of  a  murderer  than  I  did  then.  I 
tried  to  shoot  the  bird,  but  my  aim  was  so  bad  that  I 
could  not  do  her  this  mercy,  and  at  last  she  flew  away, 
and  I  saw  her  no  more. 

The  spring  was  now  opening,  and  I  was  able  to  keep 
more  and  more  with  Nature,  who  was  kinder  to  me 
than  I  was  to  her  other  children,  or  wished  to  be,  and 
I  got  the  better  of  my  malady,  which  gradually  left  me 
for  no  more  reason  apparently  than  it  came  upon  me. 
But  I  was  still  far  from  well,  and  I  was  in  despair  of 
my  future.  I  began  to  read  again — I  suppose  I  had 
really  never  altogether  stopped.  I  borrowed  from  my 
friend  the  bookbinder  a  German  novel,  which  had  for 
me  a  message  of  lasting  cheer.  It  was  the  Afraja  of 
Theodore  IMligge,  a  story  of  life  in  ITorway  during  the 
last  century,  and  I  remember  it  as  a  very  lovely  story 
indeed,  with  honest  studies  of  character  among  the  IsFor- 
wegians,  and  a  tender  pathos  in  the  fate  of  the  little 
Lap  heroine  Gula,  who  was  perhaps  sufficiently  ro- 
manced. The  hero  was  a  young  Dane,  who  was  going 
up  among  the  fiords  to  seek  his  fortune  in  the  northern 
fisheries ;  and  by  a  process  inevitable  in  youth  I  became 
identified  with  him,  so  that  I  adventured,  and  enjoyed, 
and  suffered  in  his  person  throughout.  There  was  a  su- 
preme moment  when  he  was  sailing  through  the  fiords, 
and  finding  himself  apparently  locked  in  by  their  moun- 
tain walls  without  sign  or  hope  of  escape,  but  somehow 
always  escaping  by  some  unimagined  channel,  and  keep- 

135 


MY  LITERARY   PASSIONS 

ing  on.  The  lesson  for  him  was  one  of  trust  and 
courage;  and  I,  who  seemed  to  be  then  shut  in  upon  a 
mountain-walled  fiord  without  inlet  or  outlet,  took  the 
lesson  home  and  promised  myself  not  to  lose  heart  again. 
It  seems  a  little  odd  that  this  passage  of  a  book,  by  no 
means  of  the  greatest,  should  hav^e  had  such  an  effect 
with  me  at  a  time  when  I  was  no  longer  so  young  as  to 
be  unduly  impressed  by  what  I  read ;  but  it  is  true  that 
I  have  never  since  found  myself  in  circumstances  where 
there  seemed  to  be  no  getting  forward  or  going  back, 
without  a  vision  of  that  fiord  scenery,  and  then  a  rise 
of  faith,  that  if  I  kept  on  I  should,  somehow,  come  out 
of  my  prisoning  environment. 


XXVI 

GEORGE    ELIOT,  HAWTHORNE,  GOETHE,  HEINE 

I  GOT  back  health  enough  to  be  of  use  in  the  printing- 
office  that  autumn,  and  I  was  quietly  at  work  there 
with  no  visible  break  in  my  surroundings  when  sud- 
denly the  whole  world  opened  to  me  through  what  had 
seemed  an  impenetrable  wall.  The  Republican  news- 
paper at  the  capital  had  been  bought  by  a  new  manage- 
ment, and  the  editorial  force  reorganized  upon  a  foot- 
ing of  what  we  then  thought  metropolitan  enterprise; 
and  to  my  great  joy  and  astonishment  I  was  asked  to 
come  and  take  a  place  in  it.  The  place  offered  me  was 
not  one  of  lordly  distinction ;  in  fact,  it  was  partly  of 
the  character  of  that  I  had  already  rejected  in  Cincin- 
nati, but  I  hoped  that  in  the  smaller  city  its  duties 
would  not  be  so  odious ;  and  by  the  time  I  came  to  fill  it, 
a  change  had  taken  place  in  the  arrangements  so  that  I 
was  given  charge  of  the  news  department.  This  in- 
cluded the  literary  notices  and  the  book  reviews,  and  I 
am  afraid  that  I  at  once  gave  my  prime  attention  to 
these. 

It  was  an  evening  paper,  and  I  had  nearly  as  much 
time  for  reading  and  study  as  I  had  at  home.  But 
now  society  began  to  claim  a  share  of  this  leisure,  which 
I  by  no  means  begrudged  it.  Society  was  very  charm- 
ing in  Columbus  then,  w^ith  a  pretty  constant  round 
of  dances  and  suppers,  and  an  easy  cordiality,  which  I 
dare  say  young  people  still  find  in  it  everywhere.    I  met 

137 


MY   LITEPARY   PASSIONS 

a  great  many  cultivated  people,  chiefly  young  ladies, 
and  there  were  several  houses  where  we  yoimg  fellows 
went  and  came  almost  as  freely  as  if  they  were  our  own. 
There  we  had  music  and  cards,  and  talk  about  books, 
and  life  appeared  to  me  richly  worth  living ;  if  any  one 
had  said  this  was  not  the  best  planet  in  the  universe  I 
should  have  called  him  a  pessimist,  or  at  least  thought 
him  so,  for  we  had  not  the  word  in  those  days.  A  world 
in  which  all  those  pretty  and  gracious  women  dwelt, 
among  the  figures  of  the  waltz  and  the  lancers,  with  chat 
between  about  the  last  instalment  of  The  Newcomes,  was 
good  enough  world  for  me ;  I  was  only  afraid  it  was  too 
good.  There  were,  of  course,  some  girls  who  did  not 
read,  but  few  openly  professed  indifference  to  litera- 
ture, and  there  was  much  lending  of  books  back  and 
forth,  and  much  debate  of  them.  That  was  the  day 
when  Adam  Bede  was  a  new  book,  and  in  this  I  had 
my  first  knowledge  of  that  great  intellect  for  which  I 
had  no  passion,  indeed,  bat  always  the  deepest  respect, 
the  highest  honor;  and  which  has  from  time  to  time 
profoundly  influenced  me  by  its  ethics. 

I  state  these  things  simply  and  somewhat  baldly;  I 
might  easily  refine  upon  them,  and  study  that  subtle 
effect  for  good  and  for  evil  which  young  people  are 
always  receiving  from  the  fiction  they  read;  but  this 
is  not  the  time  or  place  for  the  inquiry,  and  I  only 
wish  to  own  that  so  far  as  I  understand  it,  the  chief 
part  of  my  ethical  experience  has  been  from  novels. 
The  life  and  character  I  have  found  portrayed  there 
have  appealed  always  to  the  consciousness  of  right  and 
wrong  implanted  in  me ;  and  from  no  one  has  this  appeal 
been  stronger  than  from  George  Eliot.  Her  influence 
continued  through  many  years,  and  I  can  question  it 
now  only  in  the  undue  burden  she  seems  to  throw  upon 
the   individual,    and    her    failure   to    account    largely 

138 


GEOKGE  ELIOT,  HAWTHORNE,   GOETHE,   HEINE 

enough  for  motive  from  the  social  environment.     There 
her  work  seems  to  me  un})hilosophical. 

It  shares  whatever  error  there  is  in  its  perspective 
with  that  of  Hawthorne,  whose  Marble  Faun  was  a  new 
book  at  the  same  time  that  Adam  Bede  was  new,  and 
whose  books  now  came  into  my  life  and  gave  it  their 
tinge.  He  was  always  dealing  with  the  problem  of 
evil,  too,  and  I  found  a  more  potent  charm  in  his  more 
artistic  handling  of  it  than  I  found  in  George  Eliot. 
Of  course,  I  then  preferred  the  region  of  pure  romance 
where  he  liked  to  place  his  action;  but  I  did  not  find 
his  instances  the  less  veritable  because  they  shone  out  in 

"  The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land." 

I  read  the  Marble  Faun  first,  and  then  the  Scarlet 
Letter,  and  then  the  House  of  Seven  Gables,  and  then 
the  Blithedale  Romance;  but  I  always  liked  best  the 
last,  which  is  more  nearly  a  novel,  and  more  realistic 
than  the  others.  They  all  moved  me  with  a  sort  of 
effect  such  as  I  had  not  felt  before.  They  were  so  far 
from  time  and  place  that,  although  most  of  them  re- 
lated to  our  country  and  epoch,  I  could  not  imagine 
anything  approximate  from  them ;  and  Hawthorne  him- 
self seemed  a  remote  and  impalpable  agency,  rather  than 
a  person  whom  one  might  actually  meet,  as  not  long 
afterward  happened  with  me.  I  did  not  hold  the  sort  of 
fancied  converse  with  him  that  I  held  with  other 
authors,  and  I  cannot  pretend  that  I  had  the  affection 
for  him  that  attracted  me  to  them.  But  he  held  me  by 
his  potent  spell,  and  for  a  time  he  dominated  me  as 
completely  as  any  author  I  have  read.  More  truly  than 
any  other  American  author  he  has  been  a  passion  with 
me,  and  lately  I  heard  with  a  kind  of  pang  a  young  man 
saying  that  he  did  not  believe  I  should  find  the  Scarlet 
Letter  bear  reading  now.    I  did  not  assent  to  the  possi- 

139 


MY   LITEKAKY   PASSIONS 

l)ility,  but  the  notion  gave  me  a  shiver  of  dismay.  I 
thought  how  much  tliat  book  had  been  to  me,  how  much 
all  of  Hawthorne's  books  had  been,  and  to  have  parted 
with  my  faith  in  their  perfection  would  have  been  some- 
thing I  would  not  willingly  have  risked  doing. 

Of  course  there  is  always  something  fatally  weak  in 
the  scheme  of  the  pure  romance,  which,  after  the  color 
of  the  contemporary  mood  dies  out  of  it,  leaves  it  in 
danger  of  tumbling  into  the  dust  of  allegory ;  and  per- 
haps this  inherent  weakness  was  what  that  bold  critic 
felt  in  the  Scarlet  Letter.  But  none  of  Hawthorne's 
fables  are  Avithout  a  profound  and  distant  reach  into 
the  recesses  of  nature  and  of  being.  He  came  back 
from  his  researches  with  no  solution  of  the  question, 
with  no  message,  indeed,  but  the  awful  warning,  "  Be 
true,  be  true,"  which  is  the  burden  of  the  Scarlet  Let- 
ter; yet  in  all  his  books  there  is  the  hue  of  thoughts 
that  we  think  only  in  the  presence  of  the  mysteries  of 
life  and  death.  It  is  not  his  fault  that  this  is  not  intelli- 
gence, that  it  knots  the  brow  in  sorer  doubt  rather  than 
shapes  the  lips  to  utterance  of  the  things  that  can 
never  be  said.  Some  of  his  shorter  stories  I  have  found 
thin  and  cold  to  my  later  reading,  and  I  have  never  cared 
much  for  the  House  of  Seven  GahleSy  but  the  other  day 
I  was  reading  the  BlUhedale  Romance  again,  and  I 
found  it  as  potent,  as  significant,  as  sadly  and  strangely 
true  as  when  it  first  enthralled  my  soul. 

In  those  days  when  I  tried  to  kindle  my  heart  at 
the  cold  altar  of  Goethe,  I  did  read  a  great  deal  of  his 
prose  and  somewhat  of  his  poetry,  but  it  was  to  be 
ton  years  yet  before  I  should  go  faithfully  through 
with  his  Faust  and  come  to  know  its  power.  For  tho 
present,  T  read  Wilhehn  Mcistrr  and  the  Walilverwand- 
scliaftcn,  and  worshipped  him  much  at  second-hand 
through  Heine.    In  the  mean  time  T  invested  such  Ger- 

140 


GEORGE  ELIOT,  HAWTIIOKNE,   GOETHE,  HEINE 

mans  as  I  met  with  the  halo  of  their  national  poetry, 
and  there  was  one  lady  of  whom  I  heard  with  awe  that 
she  had  once  known  my  Heine.  When  I  came  to  meet 
her,  over  a  glass  of  the  mild  egg-nog  which  she  served 
at  her  house  on  Sunday  nights,  and  she  told  me  about 
Heine,  and  how  he  looked,  and  some  few  things  he  said, 
I  suffered  an  indescribable  disappointment;  and  if  I 
could  have  been  frank  with  myself  I  should  have  owned 
to  a  fear  that  it  might  have  been  something  like  that, 
if  I  had  myself  met  the  poet  in  the  flesh,  and  tried  to 
hold  the  intimate  converse  with  him  that  I  held  in  the 
spirit.  But  I  shut  my  heart  to  all  such  misgivings  and 
went  on  reading  him  much  more  than  I  read  any  other 
German  author.  I  went  on  writing  him  too,  just  as  I 
went  on  reading  and  writing  Tennyson.  Heine  was 
always  a  personal  interest  with  me,  and  every  word  of 
his  made  me  long  to  have  had  him  say  it  to  me,  and  tell 
me  w^hy  he  said  it.  In  a  poet  of  alien  race  and  language 
and  religion  I  found  a  greater  sympathy  than  I  have 
experienced  with  any  other.  Perhaps  the  Jews  are  still 
the  chosen  people,  but  now  they  bear  the  message  of 
humanity,  while  once  they  bore  the  message  of  divinity. 
I  knew  the  ugliness  of  Heine's  nature :  his  revengef ul- 
ness,  and  malice,  and  cruelty,  and  treachery,  and  un- 
cleanness;  and  yet  he  was  supremely  charming  among 
the  poets  I  have  read.  The  tenderness  I  still  feel  for 
him  is  not  a  reasoned  love,  I  must  own ;  but,  as  I  am 
always  asking,  when  was  love  ever  reasoned  ? 

I  had  a  room-mate  that  winter  in  Columbus  who 
was  already  a  contributor  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and 
who  read  Bro^vning  as  devotedly  as  I  read  Heine.  I 
will  not  say  that  he  wrote  hijn  as  constantly,  but  if 
that  had  been  so,  I  should  not  have  cared.  What  I 
could  not  endure  without  pangs  of  secret  jealousy  was 
that  he  should  like  Heine,  too,  and  should  read  him, 

141 


MY   LITERAKY   PASSIONS 

though  it  was  but  an  arm's-length  in  an  English  ver- 
sion. He  had  found  the  origins  of  those  tricks  and 
turns  of  Heine's  in  Tristram  Shandy  and  the  Senti- 
mental Journey;  and  this  galled  me,  as  if  he  had 
shown  that  some  mistress  of  my  soul  had  studied  her 
graces  from  another  girl,  and  that  it  was  not  all  her 
own  hair  that  she  wore.  I  hid  my  rancor  as  well  as  I 
could,  and  took  what  revenge  lay  in  my  power  by  in- 
sinuating that  he  might  have  a  very  different  view  if 
he  read  Heine  in  the  original.  I  also  made  haste  to 
try  my  own  fate  with  the  Atlantic,  and  I  sent  off  to 
Mr.  Lowell  that  poem  which  he  kept  so  long  in  order 
to  make  sure  that  Heine  had  not  written  it,  as  well  as 
authorized  it. 


XXVII 

CHARLES    READE 

This  was  the  winter  when  mj  friend  Piatt  and  I 
made  our  first  literary  venture  together  in  those  Poems 
of  Two  Friends,  which  hardly  passed  the  circle  of  our 
amity;  and  it  was  altogether  a  time  of  high  literary 
exaltation  with  me.  I  walked  the  streets  of  the  friendly 
little  city  by  day  and  by  night  with  my  head  so  full  of 
rhymes  and  poetic  phrases  that  it  seemed  as  if  their 
buzzing  might  have  been  heard  several  yards  away ;  and 
I  do  not  yet  see  quite  how  I  contrived  to  keep  their 
music  out  of  my  newspaper  paragraphs.  Out  of  the 
newspaper  I  could  not  keep  it,  and  from  time  to  time 
I  broke  into  verse  in  its  columns,  to  the  great  amuse- 
ment of  the  leading  editor,  who  knew  me  for  a  young 
man  with  a  very  sharp  tooth  for  such  self-betrayals  in 
others.  He  wanted  to  print  a  burlesque  review  he  wrote 
of  the  Poems  of  Two  Friends  in  our  paper,  but  I 
would  not  suffer  it.  I  must  allow  that  it  was  very 
funny,  and  that  he  was  always  a  generous  friend,  whose 
woimds  would  have  been  as  faithful  as  any  that  could 
have  been  dealt  me  then.  He  did  not  indeed  care  much 
for  any  poetry  but  that  of  Shakespeare  and  the  In- 
goldshy  Legends;  and  when  one  morning  a  State  Sen- 
ator came  into  the  office  with  a  volume  of  Tennyson, 
and  began  to  read, 

"  The  poet  in  a  golden  clime  was  born, 
With  golden  stars  above; 
Dowered  with  the  hate  of  hate,  the  scorn  of  scorn 
The  love  of  love," 

143 


MY   LITEKARY   PASSIONS 

he  bitclicd  his  chair  about,  and  started  in  on  his  leader 
for  the  day. 

He  might  have  been  more  patient  if  he  had  kuowai 
that  this  State  Senator  was  to  be  President  Gartiekl, 
Butwho  could  know  anything  of  the  tragical  history  that 
was  so  soon  to  follow  that  winter  of  1859-GO?  Not  I; 
at  least  I  listened  rapt  by  the  poet  and  the  reader,  and 
it  seemed  to  me  as  if  the  making  and  the  reading  of 
poetry  were  to  go  on  forever,  and  that  was  to  be  all  there 
was  of  it.  To  be  sure  I  had  my  hard  little  journalistic 
misgivings  that  it  was  not  quite  the  thing  for  a  State 
Senator  to  come  round  reading  Tennyson  at  ten  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  and  I  dare  say  I  felt  myself  superior 
in  my  point  of  view,  though  I  could  not  resist  the 
charm  of  the  verse.  I  myself  did  not  bring  Tennyson 
to  the  office  at  that  time.  I  brought  Thackeray,  and  I 
remember  that  one  day  when  I  had  read  half  an  hour 
or  so  in  the  Book  of  Snobs,  the  leading  editor  said 
frankly.  Well,  now,  he  guessed  we  had  had  enough  of 
that.  He  apologized  afterwards  as  if  he  were  to  blame, 
and  not  I,  but  I  dare  say  I  was  a  nuisance  with  my 
different  literary  passions,  and  must  have  made  many 
of  my  acquaintances  very  tired  of  my  favorite  authors. 
T  had  some  consciousness  of  the  fact,  but  I  could  not 
help  it. 

I  ought  not  to  omit  from  the  list  of  these  favorites 
an  author  who  was  then  beginning  to  have  his  greatest 
vogue,  and  who  somehow  just  missed  of  being  a  very 
great  one.  We  were  all  reading  his  jaunty,  nervy,  know- 
ing books,  and  some  of  us  were  questioning  whether  we 
ought  not  to  set  him  above  Thackeray  and  Dickens  and 
George  Eliot,  tulli  quanii,  so  great  was  the  effect  that 
Charles  Tfeade  had  with  our  generation.  He  was  a  man 
who  stood  at  the  parting  of  the  ways  between  realism 
and  romanticism,  and  if  he  had  been  somewhat  more 

144 


CHARLES   READE 

of  a  man  he  might  have  been  the  master  of  a  gi'eat 
school  of  English  realism;  but,  as  it  was,  he  remained 
content  to  use  the  materials  of  realism  and  produce  the 
effect  of  romanticism.  Ho  saw  that  life  itself  infinitely 
outvalued  anything  that  could  be  feigned  about  it,  but 
its  richness  seemed  to  corrupt  him,  and  he  had  not  tlio 
clear,  ethical  conscience  which  forced  George  Eliot  to 
be  realistic  when  probably  her  artistic  prepossessions 
were  romantic. 

As  yet,  however,  there  was  no  reasoning  of  the  mat- 
ter, and  Charles  Reade  was  writing  books  of  tremendous 
adventure  and  exaggerated  character,  which  he  prided 
himself  on  deriving  from  the  facts  of  the  world  around 
him.  He  was  intoxicated  with  the  discovery  he  had 
made  that  the  truth  was  beyond  invention,  but  he  did 
not  know  what  to  do  with  the  truth  in  art  after  he  had 
found  it  in  life,  and  to  this  day  the  English  mostly  do 
not.  We  young  people  were  easily  taken  with  his  glit- 
tering error,  and  we  read  him  with  much  the  same  fury 
that  he  wrote.  Never  Too  Late  to  Mend;  Love  Me 
Little,  Love  Me  Tjong;  Christie  Johnstone;  Peg  Wof- 
fington;  and  then,  later,  Hard  Cash,  The  Cloister  and 
the  Hearth,  Foul  Play,  Put  Yourself  in  His  Place — 
how  much  they  all  meant  once,  or  seemed  to  mean ! 

The  first  of  them,  and  the  other  poems  and  fictions  I 
was  reading,  meant  more  to  me  than  the  rumors  of 
war  that  were  then  filling  the  air,  and  that  so  soon  be- 
came its  awful  actualities.  To  us  who  have  our  lives 
so  largely  in  books  the  material  world  is  always  the 
fable,  and  the  ideal  the  fact.  I  walked  with  my  feet 
on  the  ground,  but  my  head  was  in  the  clouds,  as  light 
as  any  of  them.  I  neither  praise  nor  blame  this  fact ; 
but  I  feel  bound  to  own  it,  for  that  time,  and  for  every 
time  in  my  life,  since  the  witchery  of  literature  began 
with  me. 

145 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

Those  two  happy  winters  in  Columbus,  when  I  was 
finding  opportunity  and  recognition,  were  the  heydey 
of  life  for  me.  There  lias  been  no  time  like  them 
since,  though  there  have  been  smiling  and  prosperous 
times  a  plenty;  for  then  I  was  in  the  blossom  of  my 
youth,  and  what  I  had  not  I  could  hope  for  without 
unreason,  for  I  had  so  much  of  that  which  I  had  most 
desired.  Those  times  passed,  and  there  came  other 
times,  long  years  of  abeyance,  and  waiting,  and  defeat, 
which  I  thought  would  never  end,  but  they  passed,  too. 

I  got  my  appointment  of  Consul  to  Venice,  and  I 
went  home  to  wait  for  my  passport  and  to  spend  the 
last  days,  so  full  of  civic  trouble,  before  I  should  set 
out  for  my  post.  If  I  hoped  to  serve  my  country 
there  and  sweep  the  Confederate  cruisers  from  the 
Adriatic,  I  am  afraid  my  prime  intent  was  to  add  to 
her  literature  and  to  my  own  credit.  I  intended,  while 
keeping  a  sleepless  eye  out  for  privateers,  to  write  poems 
concerning  American  life  which  should  eclipse  any- 
thing yet  done  in  that  kind,  and  in  the  mean  time  I 
read  voraciously  and  perpetually,  to  make  the  days  go 
swiftly  which  I  should  have  been  so  glad  to  have 
linger.  In  this  month  I  devoured  all  the  Waverley 
novels,  but  T  must  have  been  devouring  a  great  many 
others,  for  Charles  Reade's  Christie  Johnstone  is  asso- 
ciated with  the  last  moment  of  the  last  days. 

A  few  months  ago  I  was  at  the  old  home,  and  I  read 
that  book  again,  after  not  looking  at  it  for  more  than 
thirty  years ;  and  I  read  it  with  amazement  at  its  pre- 
vailing artistic  vulgariiy,  its  prevailing  aesthetic  error 
shot  here  and  there  with  gleams  of  light,  and  of  the 
truth  that  Eeade  himself  was  always  dimly  groping  for. 
The  book  is  written  throughout  on  the  verge  of  realism, 
with  divinations  and  conjectvires  across  its  border,  and 
with  lapses  into  the  fool's  paradise  of  romanticism,  and 

1.46 


CHAKLES   EEADE 

an  apparent  content  with  its  inanity  and  impossibility. 
But  then  it  was  brilliantly  new  and  surprising;  it 
seemed  to  bo  the  last  word  that  could  be  said  for  the 
truth  in  fiction;  and  it  had  a  spell  that  held  us  like  an 
anaesthetic  above  the  ache  of  parting,  and  the  anxiety 
for  the  years  that  must  pass,  with  all  their  redoubled 
chances,  before  our  home  circle  could  be  made  whole 
again.  I  read  on,  and  the  rest  listened,  till  the  wheels 
of  the  old  stage  made  themselves  heard  in  their  ap- 
proach through  the  absolute  silence  of  the  village  street. 
Then  we  shut  the  book  and  all  went  down  to  the  gate 
together,  and  parted  under  the  pale  sky  of  the  October 
night.  There  was  one  of  the  home  group  whom  I  was 
not  to  see  again :  the  young  brother  who  died  in  the  blos- 
som of  his  years  before  I  returned  from  my  far  and 
strange  sojourn.  He  was  too  young  then  to  share  our 
reading  of  the  novel,  but  when  I  ran  up  to  his  room  to 
bid  him  good-by  I  found  him  awake,  and,  with  aching 
hearts,  we  bade  each  other  good-by  forever ! 


XXVIII 

DANTE 

I  RAN  through  an  Italian  grammar  on  my  way  across 
the  Atlantic,  and  from  my  knowledge  of  Latin,  Spanish, 
and  French,  I  soon  had  a  reading  acquaintance  with 
the  language.  I  had  really  wanted  to  go  to  Germany, 
that  I  might  carry  forward  my  studies  in  German 
literature,  and  I  first  applied  for  the  consulate  at 
Munich.  The  powers  at  Washington  thought  it  quite 
the  same  thing  to  offer  me  Rome ;  but  I  found  that  the 
income  of  the  Roman  consulate  would  not  give  me  a 
living,  and  I  was  forced  to  decline  it.  Then  the  Presi- 
dent's private  secretaries,  Mr.  John  Nicolay  and  Mr. 
John  Hay,  who  did  not  know  me  except  as  a  young 
Westerner  who  had  written  poems  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  asked  me  how  I  would  like  Venice,  and 
promised  that  they  would  have  the  salary  put  up  to  a 
thousand  a  year,  under  the  new  law  to  embarrass  priva- 
teers. It  was  really  put  up  to  fifteen  hundred,  and 
with  this  income  assured  me  I  went  out  to  the  city 
whose  influence  changed  the  whole  course  of  my  lit- 
erary life. 

No  privateers  ever  came,  though  I  once  had  notice 
from  Turin  that  the  Florida  had  been  sighted  off  An- 
cona;  and  I  had  nearly  four  years  of  nearly  uninter- 
rupted leisure  at  Venice,  which  I  meant  to  employ  in 
reading  all  Italian  literature,  and  writing  a  history  of 
the  republic.  The  history,  of  course,  I  expected  would 
♦    "l48 


DANTE 

be  a  long  affair,  and  I  did  not  quite  suppose  that  I  could 
despatch  the  literature  iu  any  short  time ;  besides,  I  had 
several  considerable  poems  on  hand  that  occupied  mc  a 
good  deal,  and  I  worked  at  these  as  well  as  advanced 
myself  in  Italian,  preparatory  to  the  efforts  be- 
fore me. 

I  had  already  a  slight  general  notion  of  Italian  let- 
ters from  Leigh  Hunt,  and  from  other  agreeable  English 
Italianates ;  and  I  knew  that  I  wanted  to  read  not  only 
the  four  great  poets,  Dante,  Petrarch,  Ariosto,  and 
Tasso,  but  that  whole  group  of  burlesque  poets,  Pulci, 
Berni,  and  the  rest,  who,  from  what  I  knew  of  them, 
I  thought  would  be  even  more  to  my  mind.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  and  in  the  process  of  time,  I  did  read  somewhat 
of  all  these,  but  rather  in  the  minor  than  the  major  way ; 
and  I  soon  went  off  from  them  to  the  study  of  the 
modern  poets,  novelists,  and  playwrights  who  interested 
me  so  much  more.  After  my  wonted  fashion  I  read 
half  a  dozen  of  these  authors  together,  so  that  it  would 
be  hard  to  say  which  I  began  with,  but  I  had  really  a 
devotion  to  Dante,  though  not  at  that  time,  or  ever  for 
the  whole  of  Dante.  During  my  first  year  in  Venice 
I  met  an  ingenious  priest,  who  had  been  a  tutor  in  a 
patrician  family,  and  who  was  willing  to  lead  my  fal- 
tering steps  through  the  "  Inferno."  This  part 
of  the  "  Divine  Comedy "  I  read  with  a  beginner's 
carefulness,  and  with  a  rapture  in  its  beauties, 
which  I  will  whisper  the  reader  do  not  appear  in 
every  line. 

Again  I  say  it  is  a  great  pity  that  criticism  is  not 
honest  about  the  masterpieces  of  literature,  and  does 
not  confess  that  they  are  not  every  moment  masterly, 
that  they  are  often  dull  and  tough  and  dry,  as  is  cer- 
tainly the  case  with  Dante's.  Some  day,  perhaps,  we 
shall  have  this  way  of  treating  literature,  and  then  the 

149 


MY   LITEEART   PASSIONS 

lover  of  it  Avill  not  feel  obliged  to  browbeat  himself  into 
the  belief  that  if  he  is  not  always  enjoying  himself  it 
is  his  own  fault.  At  any  rate  I  will  permit  myself  the 
luxury  of  frankly  saying  that  while  I  had  a  deep  sense 
of  the  majesty  and  grandeur  of  Dante's  design,  many 
points  of  its  execution  bored  me,  and  that  I  found  the 
intermixture  of  small  local  fact  and  neighborhood  his- 
tory in  the  fabric  of  his  lofty  creation  no  part  of  its 
noblest  effect.  What  is  marvellous  in  it  is  its  expression 
of  Dante's  personality,  and  I  can  never  think  that  his 
personalities  enhance  its  greatness  as  a  work  of  art.  I 
enjoyed  them,  however,  and  I  enjoyed  them  the  more, 
as  the  innumerable  perspectives  of  Italian  history  began 
to  open  all  about  me.  Then,  indeed,  I  understood  the 
origins  if  I  did  not  understand  the  aims  of  Dante,  which 
there  is  still  much  dispute  about  among  those  who  pro- 
fess to  know  them  clearly.  What  I  finally  perceived 
was  that  his  poem  came  through  him  from  the  heart  of 
Italian  life,  such  as  it  was  in  his  time,  and  that  whatever 
it  teaches,  his  poem  expresses  that  life,  in  all  its  splen- 
dor and  squalor,  its  beauty  and  deformity,  its  love  and 
its  hate. 

Criticism  may  torment  this  sense  or  that  sense  out  of 
it,  but  at  the  end  of  the  ends  the  "  Divine  Comedy  " 
will  stand  for  the  patriotism  of  mediaeval  Italy,  as  far 
as  its  ethics  is  concerned,  and  for  a  profound  and  lofty 
ideal  of  beauty,  as  far  as  its  jiesthetics  is  concerned. 
This  is  vague  enough  and  slight  enough,  I  must  con- 
fess, but  I  must  confess  also  that  I  had  not  even  a 
conception  of  so  much  when  I  first  read  the  ^'  Inferno." 
I  went  at  it  very  simply,  and  my  enjoyment  of  it  was 
that  sort  which  finds  its  account  in  the  fine  passages, 
the  brilliant  episodes,  the  striking  pictures.  This  was 
the  effect  with  me  of  all  the  criticism  which  I  had 
hitherto  read,  and  I  am  not  sure  yet  that  the  criticism 

150 


DANTE 

wliicli  tries  to  be  of  a  larger  scope,  and  to  see  things 
"  M-holc,"  is  of  any  definite  effect.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  we  see  nothing  whole,  neither  life  nor  art.  We 
are  so  made,  in  soul  and  in  sense,  that  we  can  deal 
only  with  parts,  with  points,  with  degrees;  and  the 
endeavor  to  compass  any  entirety  must  involve  a  dis- 
comfort and  a  danger  very  threatening  to  our  intel- 
lectual integrity. 

Or  if  this  postulate  is  as  untenable  as  all  the  others, 
still  I  am  very  glad  that  I  did  not  then  lose  any  fact 
of  the  majesty,  and  beauty,  and  pathos  of  the  great 
certain  measures  for  the  sake  of  that  fourth  dimension 
of  the  poem  which  is  not  yet  made  palpable  or  visible. 
I  took  my  sad  heart's  fill  of  the  sad  story  of  "  Paolo 
and  Francesca,"  which  I  already  knew  in  Leigh 
Hunt's  adorable  dilution,  and  most  of  the  lines  read 
themselves  into  my  memory,  where  they  linger  yet.  I 
supped  on  the  horrors  of  Ugolino's  fate  with  the  strong 
gust  of  youth,  which  finds  every  exercise  of  sympathy  a 
pleasure.  My  good  priest  sat  beside  me  in  these  rich 
moments,  knotting  in  his  lap  the  calico  handkerchief  of 
the  snuff-taker,  and  entering  with  tremulous  eagerness 
into  my  joy  in  things  that  he  had  often  before  enjoyed. 
"No  doubt  he  had  an  inexhaustible  pleasure  in  them 
apart  from  mine,  for  I  have  found  my  pleasure  in  them 
perennial,  and  have  not  failed  to  taste  it  as  often  as  I 
have  read  or  repeated  any  of  the  great  passages  of  the 
poem  to  myself.  This  pleasure  came  often  from  some 
vital  phrase,  or  merely  the  inspired  music  of  a  phrase 
quite  apart  from  its  meaning.  I  did  not  get  then,  and  I 
have  not  got  since,  a  distinct  conception  of  the  journey 
through  Hell,  and  as  often  as  I  have  tried  to  under- 
stand the  topography  of  the  poem  I  have  fatigued  my- 
self to  no  purpose,  but  I  do  not  think  the  essential  mean- 
ing was  lost  upon  me. 

151 


MY   LITERACY   PASSIONS 

I  dare  say  my  priest  had  his  notion  of  the  general 
shape  and  purport,  the  gross  material  hody  of  the 
thing,  but  he  did  not  trouble  me  with  it,  while  we  sat 
tranced  together  in  the  jiresence  of  its  soul.  He  seemed, 
at  times,  so  lost  in  the  beatific  vision,  that  he  forgot  my 
stumblings  in  the  philological  darkness,  till  I  appealed 
to  him  for  help.  Then  he  would  read  aloud  with  that 
magnificent  rhythm  the  Italians  have  in  reading  their 
verse,  and  the  obscured  meaning  would  seem  to  shine 
out  of  the  mere  music  of  the  poem,  like  the  color  the 
blind  feel  in  sound. 

I  do  not  know  what  has  become  of  him,  but  if  he 
is  like  the  rest  of  the  strange  group  of  my  guides, 
philosophers,  and  friends  in  literature — the  printer, 
the  organ-builder,  the  machinist,  the  drug-clerk,  and 
the  bookbinder — I  am  afraid  he  is  dead.  In  fact,  I 
who  was  then  I,  might  be  said  to  be  dead  too,  so  little 
is  my  past  self  like  my  present  self  in  anything  but 
the  "  increasing  purpose ''  wliicli  has  kept  me  one  in 
my  love  of  literature.  He  was  a  gentle  and  kindly 
man,  with  a  life  and  a  longing,  quite  apart  from  his 
vocation,  which  were  never  lived  or  fulfilled.  I  did 
not  see  him  after  he  ceased  to  read  Dante  with  me,  and 
in  fact  I  was  instructed  by  the  suspicions  of  my  Italian 
friends  to  be  careful  how  I  consorted  with  a  priest,  who 
might  very  well  be  an  Austrian  spy.  I  parted  with  him 
for  no  such  picturesque  reason,  for  I  never  believed 
him  other  than  the  truest  and  faithfulest  of  friends, 
but  because  I  was  then  giving  myself  more  entirely  to 
work  in  which  he  could  not  help  me. 

Xaturally  enough  this  was  a  long  poem  in  the  terza 
rima  of  the  "  Divina  Commedia,"  and  dealing  with  a 
story  of  our  civil  war  in  a  fashion  so  remote  that  no 
editor  would  print  it.  This  was  the  first  fruits  and 
the  last  of  my  reading  of  Dante,  in  verse,  and  it  was 

1.^)2 


DANTE 

not  so  like  Dante  as  I  would  have  liked  to  make  it; 
but  Dante  is  not  easy  to  imitate ;  he  is  too  unconscious, 
and  too  single,  too  bent  upon  saying  the  thing  that  is 
in  him,  with  whatever  beauty  inheres  in  it,  to  put  on 
the  graces  that  others  may  catch. 


XXIX 

GOLDONT,   MANZONI,   D'AZEGLIO 

However,  this  poem  only  shared  the  fate  of  nearly 
all  the  others  that  I  wrote  at  this  time;  they  came 
back  to  me  with  imfailing  regularity  from  all  the  maga- 
zine editors  of  the  English-speaking  world ;  I  had  no 
success  with  any  of  them  till  I  sent  Mr.  Lowell  a  paper 
on  recent  Italian  comedy  for  the  North  American  Re- 
view, which  he  and  Professor  JSTorton  had  then  begun 
to  edit.  I  was  in  the  mean  time  printing  the  material 
of  Venetian  Life  and  the  Italian  Journeys  in  a  Boston 
newspaper  after  its  rejection  by  the  magazines;  and 
my  literary  life,  almost  without  my  willing  it,  had 
taken  the  course  of  critical  observance  of  books  and  men 
in  their  actuality. 

That  is  to  say,  I  was  studying  manners,  in  the  elder 
sense  of  the  word,  wherever  I  could  get  at  them  in 
the  frank  life  of  the  people  about  me,  and  in  sucH 
literature  of  Italy  as  was  then  modern.  In  this  pur- 
suit I  made  a  discovery  that  greatly  interested  me, 
and  that  specialized  my  inquiries.  I  found  that  the 
Italians  had  no  novels  which  treated  of  their  contem- 
porary life;  that  they  had  no  modern  fiction  but  the 
historical  romance.  I  found  that  if  I  wished  to  know 
their  life  from  their  literature  I  must  go  to  their  drama, 
which  was  even  then  endeavoring  to  give  their  stage  a 
faithful  picture  of  their  civilization.  There  was  even 
then,  in  the  new  circumstance  of  a  people  just  liberated 

154 


GOLDONI,   MANZONI,   D'AZEGLIO 

from  every  variety  of  intellectual  repression  and 
political  oppression,  a  group  of  dramatic  authors,  whose 
plays  were  not  only  delightful  to  see  but  delightful  to 
read,  working  in  the  good  tradition  of  one  of  the  great- 
est realists  who  has  ever  lived,  and  producing  a  drama 
of  vital  strength  and  charm.  One  of  them,  whom  I. 
by  no  means  thought  the  best,  has  given  us  a  play, 
knowTi  to  all  the  world,  which  I  am  almost  ready  to 
think  with  Zola  is  the  greatest  play  of  modern  times; 
or  if  it  is  not  so,  I  should  be  puzzled  to  name  the 
modern  drama  that  surpasses  "  La  Morte  Civile  "  of 
Paolo  Giacometti.  I  learned  to  know  all  the  dramatists 
pretty  well,  in  the  whole  range  of  their  work,  on  the 
stage  and  in  the  closet,  and  I  learned  to  know  still  better, 
and  to  love  supremely,  the  fine,  amiable  genius  whom, 
as  one  of  them  said,  they  did  not  so  much  imitate  as 
learn  from  to  imitate  nature. 

This  was  Carlo  Goldoni,  one  of  the  first  of  the  real- 
ists, but  antedating  conscious  realism  so  long  as  to  have 
been  born  at  Venice  early  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
to  have  come  to  his  hand-to-hand  fight  with  the  romanti- 
cism of  his  day  almost  before  that  century  had  reached 
its  noon.  In  the  early  sixties  of  our  own  century  I  was 
no  more  conscious  of  his  realism  than  he  was  himself  a 
hundred  years  before ;  but  I  had  eyes  in  my  head,  and 
I  saw  that  what  he  had  seen  in  Venice  so  long  before 
was  so  true  that  it  was  the  very  life  of  Venice  in  my 
own  day;  and  because  I  have  loved  the  truth  in  art 
above  all  other  things,  I  fell  instantly  and  lastingly  in 
love  with  Carlo  Goldoni.  I  was  reading  his  memoirs, 
and  learning  to  know  his  sweet,  honest,  simple  nature 
while  I  was  learning  to  know  his  work,  and  I  wish  that 
every  one  who  reads  his  plays  would  read  his  life  as 
well ;  one  must  know  him  before  one  can  fully  know 
them.    I  believe,  in  fact,  that  his  autobiography  came 

155 


MY   LITEIIAKY   PASSIOKS 

into  my  hands  first.  But,  at  any  rate,  both  arc  associ- 
ated with  the  fervors  and  languors  of  that  first  summer 
in  Venice,  so  that  I  cannot  now  take  up  a  book  of 
Goldoni's  without  a  renewed  sense  of  that  sunlight  and 
moonlight,  and  of  the  sounds  and  silences  of  a  city  that 
is  at  once  tlie  stillest  and  shrillest  in  the  world. 

Perhaps  because  I  never  found  his  work  of  great 
ethical  or  aisthetical  proportions,  but  recognized  that 
it  pretended  to  be  good  only  within  its  strict  limita- 
tionSj  I  recur  to  it  now  without  that  painful  feeling  of 
a  diminished  grandeur  in  it,  which  attends  us  so  often 
when  we  go  back  to  something  that  once  greatly  pleased 
us.  It  seemed  to  me  at  the  time  that  I  must  have  read 
all  his  comedies  in  Venice,  but  I  kept  reading  new  ones 
after  I  came  home,  and  still  I  can  take  a  volume  of 
his  from  the  shelf,  and  when  thirty  years  are  past,  find 
a  play  or  two  that  I  missed  before.  Their  number  is 
very  great,  but  perhaps  those  that  I  fancy  I  have  not 
read,  I  have  really  read  once  or  more  and  forgotten. 
That  might  very  easily  be,  for  there  is  seldom  anj^hing 
more  poignant  in  any  one  of  them  than  there  is  in  the 
average  course  of  things.  The  plays  are  light  and 
amusing  transcripts  from  life,  for  the  most  part,  and 
where  at  times  they  deepen  into  powerful  situations,  or 
express  strong  emotions,  they  do  so  with  persons  so 
little  different  from  the  average  of  our  acquaintance 
that  we  do  not  remember  just  who  the  persons  are. 

There  is  no  doubt  but  the  kindly  playwright  had  his 
conscience,  and  meant  to  make  people  think  as  well  as 
laugh.  I  know  of  none  of  his  plays  that  is  of  wrong 
effect,  or  that  violates  the  instincts  of  purity,  or  insults 
common  sense  with  the  romantic  pretence  that  wrong 
will  be  right  if  you  will  only  paint  it  rose-color.  He 
is  at  some  obvious  pains  to  "  punish  vice  and  reward 
virtue,"  ])ut  I  do  not  mean  tliat  easy  morality  when  I 

ir>(} 


GOLDONI,  MANZONI,  D'AZE(JL10 

praise  his ;  I  mean  the  more  diflScult  sort  that  recognizes 
in  each  man's  soul  the  arbiter  not  of  his  fate  surely,  but 
surely  of  his  peace,  lie  never  makes  a  fool  of  the  spec- 
tator by  feigning  that  passion  is  a  reason  or  justification, 
or  that  suffering  of  one  kind  can  atone  for  wrong  of 
another.  That  was  left  for  the  romanticists  of  our  own 
century  to  discover;  even  the  romanticists  whom  Gol- 
doni  drove  from  the  stage,  were  of  that  simpler  eigh- 
teenth-century sort  who  had  not  yet  liberated  the  indi- 
vidual from  society,  but  held  him  accountable  in  the 
old  way.  As  for  Goldoni  himself,  he  apparently  never 
dreams  of  transgression;  he  is  of  rather  an  explicit 
conventionality  in  most  things,  and  he  deals  with  society 
as  something  finally  settled.  How  artfully  he  deals 
with  it,  how  decently,  how  wholesomely,  those  who  know 
Venetian  society  of  the  eighteenth  century  historically 
will  perceive  when  they  recall  the  adequate  impression 
he  gives  of  it  without  offence  in  character  or  language  or 
situation.  This  is  the  perpetual  miracle  of  his  comedy, 
that  it  says  so  much  to  experience  and  worldly  wisdom, 
and  so  little  to  inexperience  and  worldly  innocence. 
Xo  doubt  the  Serenest  Republic  was  very  strict 
with  the  theatre,  and  suffered  it  to  hold  the  mirror  up 
to  nature  only  when  nature  was  behaving  well,  or  at 
least  behaving  as  if  young  people  were  present.  Yet 
the  Italians  are  rather  plain-spoken,  and  they  recognize 
facts  which  our  company  manners  at  least  do  not  admit 
the  existence  of.  I  should  say  that  Goldoni  was  almost 
English,  almost  American,  indeed,  in  his  observance 
of  the  proprieties,  and  I  like  this  in  him;  though  the 
proprieties  are  not  virtues,  they  are  very  good  things, 
and  at  least  are  better  than  the  improprieties. 

This,  however,  I  must  own,  had  not  a  great  deal  to 
do  with  my  liking  him  so  much,  and  I  should  be  puz- 
zled to  account  for  my  passion,  as  much  in  his  case 

157 


MY  LITERARY  PASSIONS 

as  in  most  others.  If  there  was  any  reason  for  it,  per- 
haps it  was  that  he  had  the  power  of  taking  me  out 
of  my  life,  and  putting  mc  into  the  lives  of  others, 
whom  I  felt  to  be  human  beings  as  much  as  myself. 
To  make  one  live  in  others,  this  is  the  highest  effect 
of  religion  as  well  as  of  art,  and  possibly  it  will  be  the 
highest  bliss  we  shall  ever  know.  I  do  not  pretend 
that  my  translation  was  through  my  unselfishness;  it 
was  distinctly  through  that  selfishness  which  perceives 
that  self  is  misery;  and  I  may  as  well  confess  here 
that  I  do  not  regard  the  artistic  ecstasy  as  in  any  sort 
noble.  It  is  not  noble  to  love  the  beautiful,  or  to  live 
for  it,  or  by  it;  and  it  may  even  not  be  refining.  I 
would  not  have  any  reader  of  mine,  looking  forward 
to  some  aesthetic  career,  suppose  that  this  love  is  any 
merit  in  itself;  it  may  be  the  grossest  egotism.  If  you 
cannot  look  beyond  the  end  you  aim  at,  and  seek  the 
good  which  is  not  your  own,  all  your  sacrifice  is  to 
yourself  and  not  of  yourself,  and  you  might  as  well 
be  going  into  business.  In  itself  and  for  itself  it  is 
no  more  honorable  to  win  fame  than  to  make  money, 
and  the  wish  to  do  the  one  is  no  more  elevating  than 
the  wish  to  do  the  other. 

But  in  the  days  I  write  of  I  had  no  conception  of 
this,  and  I  am  sure  that  my  blindness  to  so  plain  a 
fact  kept  me  even  from  seeking  and  knowing  the 
highest  beauty  in  the  things  I  worshipped.  I  believe 
that  if  I  had  been  sensible  of  it  I  should  have  read 
much  more  of  such  humane  Italian  poets  and  novelists 
as  ]\[anzoni  and  D'Azeglio,  whom  I  perceived  to  be 
delightful,  without  dreaming  of  them  in  the  length 
and  breadth  of  their  goodness.  'Now  and  then  its  extent 
flashed  upon  me,  but  the  glimpse  was  lost  to  my  retro- 
verted  vision  almost  as  soon  as  won.  It  is  only  in  think- 
ing back  to  them  that  I  can  realize  How  much  they  might 

158 


GOLDONI,  MANZONI,  D'AZEGLIO 

always  have  meant  to  me.  They  were  both  living  in 
my  time  in  Italy,  and  they  were  two  men  whom  I  should 
now  like  very  miicli  to  have  seen,  if  I  could  have  done 
so  without  that  futility  which  seems  to  attend  every 
effort  to  pay  one's  duty  to  such  men. 

The  love  of  country  in  all  the  Italian  poets  and  ro- 
mancers of  the  long  period  of  the  national  resurrec- 
tion ennobled  their  art  in  a  measure  which  criticism 
has  not  yet  taken  account  of.  I  conceived  of  its  effect 
then,  but  I  conceived  of  it  as  a  misfortune,  a  fatality; 
now  I  am  by  no  means  sure  that  it  was  so;  hereafter 
the  creation  of  beauty,  as  we  call  it,  for  beauty's  sake, 
may  be  considered  something  monstrous.  There  is 
forever  a  poignant  meaning  in  life  beyond  what  mere 
living  involves,  and  why  should  not  there  be  this  refer- 
ence in  art  to  the  ends  beyond  art?  The  situation, 
the  long  patience,  the  hope  against  hope,  dignified  and 
beautified  the  nature  of  the  Italian  writers  of  that  day, 
and  evoked  from  them  a  quality  which  I  was  too  little 
trained  in  their  school  to  appreciate.  But  in  a  sort  I 
did  feel  it,  I  did  know  it  in  them  all,  so  far  as  I  knew 
any  of  them,  and  in  the  tragedies  of  Manzoni,  and  in 
the  romances  of  D'Azeglio,  and  yet  more  in  the  simple 
and  modest  records  of  D'A^eglio's  life  published  after 
his  death,  I  profited  by  it,  and  unconsciously  prepared 
myself  for  that  point  of  view  whence  all  the  arts  appear 
one  with  all  the  uses,  and  there  is  nothing  beautiful 
that  is  false. 

I  am  very  glad  of  that  experience  of  Italian  litera- 
ture, which  I  look  back  upon  as  altogether  wholesome 
and  sanative,  after  my  excesses  of  Heine.  'No  doubt 
it  was  all  a  minor  affair  as  compared  with  equal  knowl- 
edge of  French  literature,  and  so  far  it  was  a  loss  of 
time.  It  is  idle  to  dispute  the  general  positions  of 
criticism,  and  there  is  no  useful  gainsaying  its  judg- 

159 


MY  LTTERAKY  PASSIONS 

iiicnt  that  French  literature  is  a  major  literature  and 
Italian  a  minor  literature  in  this  century;  hut  whether 
this  verdict  will  stand  for  all  time,  there  may  he  a 
reasonahle  doubt.  Criterions  may  change,  and  here- 
after people  may  look  at  the  whole  affair  so  differently 
that  a  literature  which  went  to  the  making  of  a  people 
will  not  he  accounted  a  minor  literature,  hut  will  take 
its  place  with  the  great  literary  movements. 

I  do  not  insist  upon  this  possibility,  and  I  am  far 
from  defending  myself  for  liking  the  comedies  of  Gol- 
doni  better  than  the  comedies  of  Moliere,  upon  purely 
resthetic  grounds,  where  there  is  no  question  as  to  the 
artistic  quality.  Perhaps  it  is  because  I  came  to 
!Moliere's  comedies  later,  and  with  my  taste  formed 
for  those  of  Goldoni ;  but  again,  it  is  here  a  matter  of 
affection ;  I  find  Goldoni  for  me  more  sympathetic,  and 
because  he  is  more  sympathetic  I  cannot  do  otherwise 
than  find  him  more  natural,  more  true.  I  will  allow 
that  this  is  vulnerable,  and  as  I  say,  I  do  not  defend  it. 
Moliere  has  a  place  in  literature  infinitely  loftier  than 
Goldoni's;  and  he  has  supplied  types,  characters, 
phrases,  to  the  currency  of  thought,  and  Goldoni  has 
supplied  none.  It  is,  therefore,  without  reason  which 
I  can  allege  that  I  enjoy  Goldoni  more.  I  am  perfectly 
willing  to  be  rated  low  for  my  preference,  and  yet  I 
think  that  if  it  had  been  Goldoni's  luck  to  have  had  the 
great  age  of  a  mighty  monarchy  for  his  scene,  instead 
of  the  decline  of  an  outworn  republic,  his  place  in  litera- 
ture might  have  been  different. 


XXX 

"PASTOR  FIDO,"  "AMINTA,"  "  ROMOLA,"  "YEAST," 
"PAUL  FERROLL" 

I  HAVE  always  had  a  great  love  for  the  absolutely  un- 
real, the  purely  fanciful  in  all  the  arts,  as  well  as  of 
the  absolutely  real ;  I  like  the  one  on  a  far  lower  plane 
than  the  other,  but  it  delights  me,  as  a  pantomime  at  a 
theatre  does,  or  a  comic  opera,  which  has  its  being 
Avholly  outside  the  realm  of  the  probabilities.  When  I 
once  transport  myself  to  this  sphere  I  have  no  longer 
any  care  for  them,  and  if  I  could  I  would  not  exact  of 
them  an  allegiance  which  has  no  concern  with  them. 
Tor  this  reason  I  have  always  vastly  enjoyed  the  arti- 
ficialities of  pastoral  poetry ;  and  in  Venice  I  read  with 
a  pleasure  few  serious  poems  have  given  me  the  "  Pastor 
Fido  "  of  Guarini.  I  came  later  but  not  with  fainter 
zest  to  the  "  Aminta  "  of  Tasso,  without  which,  perhaps, 
the  "  Pastor  Pido  "  would  not  have  been,  and  I  revelled 
in  the  pretty  impossibilities  of  both  these  charming 
effects  of  the  liberated  imagination. 

I  do  not  the  least  condemn  that  sort  of  thing;  one 
does  not  live  by  sweets,  unless  one  is  willing  to  spoil 
one's  digestion ;  but  one  may  now  and  then  indulge  one's 
self  without  harm,  and  a  sugar-plum  or  two  after  din- 
ner may  even  be  of  advantage.  "What  I  object  to  is  the 
romantic  thing  which  asks  to  be  accepted  with  all  its 
fantasticality  on  the  ground  of  reality ;  that  scdms  to  me 
hopelessly  bad.    But  I  have  been  able  to  dwell  in  their 

161 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

charming  out-land  or  no-land  with  the  shepherds  and 
shepherdesses  and  nymphs,  satyrs,  and  fauns,  of  Tasso 
and  Guarini,  and  I  take  the  finest  pleasure  in  their  com- 
pany, their  Dresden  china  loves  and  sorrows,  their  airy 
raptures,  their  painless  throes,  their  polite  anguish, 
their  tears  not  the  least  salt,  but  flowing  as  sweet  as  the 
purling  streams  of  their  enamelled  meadows.  I  wish 
there  were  more  of  that  sort  of  writing;  I  should  like 
very  much  to  read  it. 

The  greater  part  of  my  reading  in  Venice,  when  I 
began  to  find  that  I  could  not  help  writing  about  the 
place,  was  in  books  relating  to  its  life  and  history, 
which  I  made  use  of  rather  than  found  pleasure  in. 
My  studies  in  Italian  literature  were  full  of  the  most 
charming  interest,  and  if  I  had  to  read  a  good  many 
books  for  conscience'  sake,  there  were  a  good  many 
others  I  read  for  their  own  sake.  They  were  chiefly 
poetry ;  and  after  the  first  essays  in  which  I  tasted  the 
classic  poets,  they  were  chiefly  the  books  of  the  modern 
poets. 

For  the  present  I  went  no  farther  in  German  litera- 
ture, and  I  recurred  to  it  in  later  years  only  for  deeper 
and  fuller  knowledge  of  Heine;  my  Spanish  was  ig- 
nored, as  all  first  loves  are  when  one  has  reached  the 
age  of  twenty -six.  My  English  reading  was  almost 
wholly  in  the  Tauchnitz  editions,  for  otherwise  English 
books  were  not  easily  come  at  then  and  there.  George 
Eliot's  Romola  was  then  new,  and  I  read  it  again  and 
again  with  the  sense  of  moral  enlargement  wdiich  the 
first  fiction  to  conceive  of  the  true  nature  of  evil  gave 
all  of  us  who  were  young  in  that  day.  Tito  Malema 
was  not  only  a  lesson,  he  was  a  revelation,  and  I 
trembled  before  him  as  in  the  presence  of  a  warning 
and  a  message  from  the  only  veritable  perdition.  Tlis 
life,  in  which  so  much  that  was  good  was  mixed  with 

162 


"PASTOR   FIDO,"   "AMINTA,"   "ROMOLA" 

so  much  that  was  bad,  lighted  up  the  whole  domain  of 
egotism  with  its  glare,  and  made  one  feel  how  near  the 
best  and  the  worst  were  to  each  other,  and  how  they 
sometimes  touched  without  absolute  division  in  texture 
and  color.  The  book  was  undoubtedly  a  favorite  of 
mine,  and  I  did  not  see  then  the  artistic  falterings  in  it 
which  were  afterwards  evident  to  me. 

There  were  not  Romolas  to  read  all  the  time, 
though,  and  I  had  to  devolve  upon  inferior  authors  for 
my  fiction  the  greater  part  of  the  time.  Of  course,  I 
kept  up  with  Our  Mutual  Friend^  which  Dickens  was 
then  writing,  and  with  Philip,  which  was  to  be  the  last 
of  Thackeray.  I  was  not  yet  sufficiently  instructed  to 
appreciate  Trollope,  and  I  did  not  read  him  at  all. 

I  got  hold  of  Kingsley,  and  read  Yeasty  and  I  think 
some  other  novels  of  his,  with  great  relish,  and  without 
sensibility  to  his  Charles  Readeish  lapses  from  his  art 
into  the  material  of  his  art.  But  of  all  the  minor 
fiction  that  I  read  at  this  time  none  impressed  me  so 
much  as  three  books  which  had  then  already  had  their 
vogue,  and  which  I  knew  somewhat  from  reviews. 
They  were  Paul  FerroU,  ^Y^ly  Paul  FcrroU  Killed  His 
iWifej,  and  Day  after  Day.  The  first  two  were,  of 
course,  related  to  each  other,  and  they  were  all  three 
full  of  unwholesome  force.  As  to  their  aesthetic  merit 
I  will  not  say  anything,  for  I  have  not  looked  at  either 
of  the  books  for  thirty  years.  I  fancy,  however,  that 
their  strength  was  rather  of  the  tetanic  than  the  titanic 
sort.  They  made  your  sympathies  go  with  the  hero, 
who  deliberately  puts  his  wife  to  death  for  the  lie  she 
told  to  break  off  his  marriage  with  the  woman  he  had 
loved,  and  who  then  marries  this  tender  and  gentle 
girl,  and  lives  in  great  happiness  witli  her  till  her  death. 
Murder  in  the  first  degree  is  flattered  by  his  fate  up 
to  the  point  of  letting  him  die  peacefully  in  Boston 

163 


MY  LITERARY  PASSIONS 

after  these  dealings  of  his  in  England;  and  altogether 
his  story  could  not  be  commended  to  people  with  a 
morbid  taste  for  bloodshed.  Xaturally  enough  the 
books  were  written  by  a  perfectly  good  woman,  the  wife 
of  an  English  clerg}Tnan,  whose  friends  were  greatly 
scandalized  by  them.  As  a  sort  of  atonement  she  wrote 
Day  after  Day,  the  story  of  a  dismal  and  joyless  orphan, 
who  dies  to  the  sound  of  angelic  music,  faint  and  far- 
heard,  filling  the  whole  chamber.  A  carefuller  study  of 
the  phenomenon  reveals  the  fact  that  the  seraphic 
strains  are  produced  by  the  steam  escaping  from  the 
hot-water  bottles  at  the  feet  of  the  invalid. 

As  usual,  I  am  not  able  fully  to  account  for  my  liking 
of  these  books,  and  I  am  so  far  from  wishing  to  justify 
it  that  I  think  I  ought  rather  to  excuse  it.  But  since  I 
was  really  greatly  fascinated  with  them,  and  read  them 
with  an  ever-growing  fascination,  the  only  honest  thing 
to  do  is  to  own  my  subjection  to  them.  It  would  be  an 
interesting  and  important  question  for  criticism  to 
study,  that  question  why  certain  books  at  a  certain  time 
greatly  dominate  our  fancy,  and  others  manifestly  bet- 
ter have  no  influence  with  us.  A  curious  proof  of  the 
subtlety  of  these  Paul  Eerroll  books  in  the  appeal  they 
made  to  the  imagination  is  the  fact  that  I  came  to  them 
fresh  from  Romolo,  and  full  of  horror  for  myself  in 
Tito ;  yet  I  sympathized  throughout  with  Paul  Ferroll, 
and  was  glad  when  he  got  away. 


XXXI 

ERCKMANN-CHxVfRIAN,    BJORSTJERNE    BJORNSON 

On  my  return  to  Americca,  my  literary  life  immedi- 
ately took  such  form  that  most  of  my  reading  was  done 
for  review.  I  wrote  at  first  a  good  many  of  the  lighter 
criticisms  in  The  Nation,  at  ISTew  York,  and  after  I 
went  to  Boston  to  hecome  the  assistant  editor  of  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  I  wrote  the  literary  notices  in  that 
periodical  for  four  or  five  years. 

It  was  only  when  I  came  into  full  charge  of  the  maga- 
zine that  I  hegan  to  share  these  labors  with  others,  and 
I  continued  them  in  some  measure  as  long  as  I  had  any 
relation  to  it.  My  reading  for  reading's  sake,  as  I  had 
hitherto  done  it,  was  at  an  end,  and  I  read  primarily 
for  the  sake  of  writing  about  the  book  in  hand,  and 
secondarily  for  the  pleasure  it  might  give  me.  This 
was  always  considerable,  and  sometimes  so  great  that  I 
forgot  the  critic  in  it,  and  read  on  and  on  for  pleasure. 
I  was  master  to  review  this  book  or  that  as  I  chose,  and 
generally  I  reviewed  only  books  I  liked  to  read,  though 
sometimes  I  felt  that  I  ought  to  do  a  book,  and  did  it 
from  a  sense  of  duty ;  these  perfunctory  criticisms  I  do 
not  think  were  very  useful,  but  I  tried  to  make  tliera 
honest. 

In  a  long  sickness,  which  I  had  shortly  after  I  went 
to  live  in  Cambridge,  a  friend  brought  me  several  of 
the  stories  of  Erckmann-Chatrian,  whom  people  were 
then  reading  much  more  than  they  are  now,  I  believe; 

165 


MY  LITERARY  PASSIOXS 

and  I  had  a  great  joy  in  them,  which  I  have  renewed 
since  as  often  as  I  have  read  one  of  their  books.  They 
have  much  the  same  quality  of  simple  and  sincerely 
moralized  realism  that  I  found  afterwards  in  the  work 
of  the  early  Swiss  realist,  Jeremias  Gotthelf,  and  very 
likely  it  was  this  that  captivated  my  judgment.  As  for 
my  affections,  battered  and  exhausted  as  they  ought  to 
have  been  in  many  literary  passions,  they  never  went 
out  with  fresher  enjoyment  than  they  did  to  the  charm- 
ing story  of  UAmi  Fritz,  which,  when  I  merely  name 
it,  breathes  the  spring  sun  and  air  about  me,  and  fills 
my  senses  with  the  beauty  and  sweetness  of  cherry  blos- 
soms. It  is  one  of  the  loveliest  and  kindest  books  that 
ever  was  written,  and  my  heart  belongs  to  it  still ;  to  be 
sure  it  belongs  to  several  hundreds  of  other  books  in 
equal  entirety. 

It  belongs  to  all  the  books  of  the  great  ISTorwegian 
Bjorstjerne  Bjornson,  whose  Arne,  and  whose  Happy 
Boy,  and  whose  Fisher  Maiden  I  read  in  this  same  for- 
tunate sickness.  I  have  since  read  every  other  book  of 
his  that  I  could  lay  hands  on:  Sinnove  SolbaJcJcen,  and 
Magnliild,  and  Captain  Manzana,  and  Dust,  and  In 
God's  Ways,  and  Sigurd,  and  plays  like  "  The  Glove  " 
and  "  The  Bankrupt."  He  has  never,  as  some  authors 
have,  dwindled  in  my  sense;  when  I  open  his  page, 
there  I  find  him  as  large,  and  free,  and  bold  as  ever. 
lie  is  a  great  talent,  a  clear  conscience,  a  beautiful  art. 
He  has  my  love  not  only  because  he  is  a  poet  of  the 
most  exquisite  verity,  but  because  he  is  a  lover  of  men, 
with  a  faith  in  them  such  as  can  move  mountains  of 
ignorance,  and  dulness,  and  greed.  He  is  next  to 
Tolstoy  in  his  willingness  to  give  himself  for  his  kind ; 
if  he  would  rather  give  himself  in  fighting  than  in  suf- 
fering wrong,  I  do  not  know  that  his  self-sacrifice  is  less 
in  degree. 

166 


ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN,  BJORNSON 

I  confess,  however,  that  I  do  not  think  of  him  as  a 
patriot  and  a  socialist  when  I  read  him;  he  is  then 
purely  a  poet,  whose  gift  holds  me  rapt  ahove  the  world 
where  I  have  left  my  troublesome  and  wearisome  self 
for  the  time.  I  do  not  know  of  any  novels  that  a  young 
cndeavorer  in  fiction  could  more  profitably  read  than 
his  for  their  large  and  simple  method,  their  trust  of  the 
reader's  intelligence,  their  sympathy  with  life.  With 
him  the  problems  are  all  soluble  by  the  enlightened  and 
regenerate  will ;  there  is  no  baffling  Fate,  but  a  helping 
God.  In  Bjornson  there  is  nothing  of  Ibsen's  scornful 
despair,  nothing  of  his  anarchistic  contempt,  but  his  art 
is  full  of  the  Avarmth  and  color  of  a  poetic  soul,  with  no 
touch  of  the  icy  cynicism  which  freezes  you  in  the  other. 
I  have  felt  the  cold  fascination  of  Ibsen,  too,  and  I 
should  be  far  from  denying  his  mighty  mastery,  but  he 
has  never  possessed  me  with  the  delight  that  Bjornson 
has. 

In  those  days  I  read  not  only  all  the  new  books,  but 
I  made  many  forays  into  the  past,  and  came  back  now 
and  then  with  rich  spoil,  though  I  confess  that  for  the 
most  part  I  had  my  trouble  for  my  pains ;  and  I  wish 
now  that  I  had  given  the  time  I  spent  on  the  English 
classics  to  contemporary  literature,  which  I  have  not 
the  least  hesitation  in  saying  I  like  vastly  better.  In 
fact,  I  believe  that  the  preference  for  the  literature  of 
the  past,  except  in  the  case  of  the  greatest  masters,  is 
mainly  the  affectation  of  people  who  cannot  othermse 
distinguish  themselves  from  the  herd,  and  who  wish 
very  much  to  do  so.  ^ 

There  is  much  to  be  learned  from  the  minor  novel- 
ists and  poets  of  the  past  about  people's  ways  of  think- 
ing and  feeling,  but  not  much  that  the  masters  do  not 
give  you  in  better  quality  and  fuller  measure;  and  I 
should  say,  Read  the  old  masters  and  let  their  schools 

167 


]\rY  LITERARY  PASSIONS 

go,  ratlior  tlian  neglect  any  possible  master  of  your  own 
time.  Above  all,  I  would  not  have  any  one  read  an  old 
author  merely  that  he  might  not  be  ignorant  of  him ; 
that  is  most  beggarly,  and  no  good  can  come  of  it. 
When  literature  becomes  a  duty  it  ceases  to  be  a  passion, 
and  all  the  schoolmastering  in  the  world,  solemnly  ad- 
dressed to  the  conscience,  cannot  make  the  fact  other- 
wise. It  is  well  to  read  for  the  sake  of  knowing  a  cer- 
tain ground  if  you  are  to  make  use  of  your  knowledge 
in  a  certain  way,  but  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose 
that  this  is  a  love  of  literature. 


XXXII 

TOURGUENIEF,   AUERBACH 

In  those  years  at  Cambridge  my  most  notable  literary 
experience  without  donbt  was  the  knowledge  of  Tour- 
guenief's  novels,  which  began  to  be  recognized  in  all 
their  greatness  about  the  middle  seventies.  I  think 
they  made  their  way  with  such  of  our  public  as  were 
able  to  appreciate  them  before  they  were  accepted  in 
England ;  but  that  does  not  matter.  It  is  enough  for 
the  present  purpose  that  8moJce,  and  Lisa,  and  On  the 
Eve,  and  Dimitrl  Roudine,  and  Spring  Floods,  passed 
one  after  another  through  my  hands,  and  that  I  formed 
for  their  author  one  of  the  profoundest  literary  passions 
of  my  life. 

I  now  think  that  there  is  a  finer  and  truer  method 
than  his,  but  in  its  way,  Tourguenief's  method  is  as 
far  as  art  can  go.  That  is  to  say,  his  fiction  is  to  the 
last  degree  dramatic.  The  persons  are  sparely  de- 
scribed, and  briefly  accounted  for,  and  then  they  are 
left  to  transact  their  affair,  whatever  it  is,  with  the 
least  possible  comment  or  explanation  from  the  author. 
The  effect  flows  naturally  from  their  characters,  and 
when  they  have  done  or  said  a  thing  you  conjecture 
why  as  unerringly  as  you  would  if  they  were  people 
whom  you  knew  outside  of  a  book.  I  had  already  con- 
ceived of  the  possibility  of  this  from  Bjornson,  who 
practises  the  same  method,  but  I  was  still  too  sunken 
in  the  gross  darkness  of  English  fiction  to  rise  to  a  full 

1G9 


MY  LITERAKY   PASSIONS 

consciousness  of  its  excellence.  When  I  remembered 
the  deliberate  and  impertinent  moralizing  of  Thackeray, 
tlie  clumsy  exegesis  of  George  Eliot,  the  knowing  nods 
and  winks  of  Charles  Reade,  the  stage-carpentering  and 
lime-lighting  of  Dickens,  even  the  fine  and  important 
analysis  of  Hawthorne,  it  was  with  a  joyful  astonish- 
ment that  I  realized  the  great  art  of  Tourguenief. 

Here  was  a  master  who  was  apparently  not  trying  to 
work  out  a  plot,  who  was  not  even  trying  to  work  out  a 
character,  but  was  standing  aside  from  the  whole  affair, 
and  letting  the  characters  work  the  plot  out.  The 
method  was  revealed  perfectly  in  Smolie,  but  each  suc- 
cessive book  of  his  that  I  read  was  a  fresh  proof  of  its 
truth,  a  revelation  of  its  transcendent  superiority.  I 
think  now  that  I  exaggerated  its  value  somewhat;  but 
this  was  inevitable  in  the  first  surprise.  The  sane 
aesthetics  of  the  first  Russian  author  I  read,  however, 
have  seemed  more  and  more  an  essential  part  of  the 
sane  ethics  of  all  the  Russians  I  have  read.  It  was 
not  only  that  Tourguenief  had  painted  life  truly,  but 
that  he  had  painted  it  conscientiously. 

Tourguenief  was  of  that  great  race  which  has  more 
than  any  other  fully  and  freely  uttered  human  nature, 
without  either  false  pride  or  false  shame  in  its  naked- 
ness. His  themes  were  oftenest  those  of  the  French 
novelist,  but  how  far  he  was  from  handling  them  in 
the  French  manner  and  with  the  French  spirit !  In  his 
hands  sin  suffered  no  dramatic  punishment;  it  did  not 
always  show  itself  as  unhappiness,  in  the  personal  sense, 
but  it  was  always  unrest,  and  without  the  hope  of  peace. 
If  the  end  did  not  appear,  tlie  fact  tliat  it  must  be  miser- 
able always  appeared.  Life  showed  itself  to  me  in  dif- 
ferent colors  after  I  had  once  read  Tourguenief;  it 
became  more  serious,  more  awful,  and  with  mystical 
responsibilities  I  had  not  known  before.    Hy  gay  Amer- 

170 


TOUKGUENIEF,  AUERBACH 

ican  horizons  were  bathed  in  the  vast  melancholy  of 
the  Slav,  patient,  agnostic,  trustful.  At  the  same  time 
nature  revealed  herself  to  me  through  him  with  an 
intimacy  she  had  not  hitherto  shown  me.  There  arc 
passages  in  this  wonderful  writer  alive  with  a  truth 
that  seems  drawn  from  the  reader's  own  knowledge: 
who  else  but  Tourguenief  and  one's  own  most  secret  self 
ever  felt  all  the  rich,  sad  meaning  of  the  night  air  draw- 
ing in  at  the  open  window,  of  the  fires  burning  in  the 
darkness  on  the  distant  fields  ?  I  try  in  vain  to  give 
some  notion  of  the  subtle  sympathy  with  nature  which 
scarcely  put  itself  into  words  with  him.  As  for  the 
people  of  his  fiction,  though  they  were  of  orders  and 
civilizations  so  remote  from  my  experience,  they  were 
of  the  eternal  human  types  whose  origin  and  potentiali- 
ties every  one  may  find  in  his  own  heart,  and  I  felt 
their  verity  in  every  touch, 

I  camiot  describe  the  satisfaction  his  work  gave  me ; 
I  can  only  impart  some  sense  of  it,  perhaps,  by  saying 
that  it  was  like  a  happiness  I  had  been  waiting  for  all 
my  life,  and  now  that  it  had  come,  I  was  richly  con- 
tent forever.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  art  of 
Tourguenief  surpasses  the  art  of  Bjornson;  I  think 
Bjornson  is  quite  as  fine  and  true.  But  the  Norwe- 
gian deals  with  simple  and  j)rimitive  circumstances  for 
the  most  part,  and  always  with  a  small  world ;  and  the 
Russian  has  to  do  with  human  nature  inside  of  its 
conventional  shells,  and  his  scene  is  often  as  large  as 
Europe.  Even  when  it  is  as  remote  as  IN'orway,  it  is 
still  related  to  the  great  capitals  by  the  history  if  not 
the  actuality  of  the  characters.  Most  of  Tourguenief's 
books  I  have  read  many  times  over,  all  of  them  I  have 
read  more  than  twice.  Eor  a  number  of  years  I  read 
them  again  and  again  without  much  caring  for  other 
fiction.     It  was  only  the  other  day  that  I  read  Smohe 

171 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

through  once  more,  with  no  diminished  sense  of  its 
truth,  but  with  somewhat  less  than  my  first  satisfaction 
in  its  art.  Perhaps  this  was  because  I  had  reached 
the  point  through  my  acquaintance  with  Tolstoy  where 
I  was  impatient  even  of  the  artifice  that  hid  itself.  In 
Smol'e  I  was  now  aware  of  an  artifice  that  kept  out  of 
sight,  but  was  still  always  present  somewhere,  invisibly 
operating  the  story. 

I  must  not  fail  to  o^^^l  the  great  pleasure  that  I  have 
had  in  some  of  the  stories  of  Auerbach.  It  is  true  that 
I  have  never  cared  greatly  for  On  the  Heights,  which  in 
its  dealing  with  royalties  seems  too  far  aloof  from  the 
ordinary  human  life,  and  which  on  the  moral  side 
finally  fades  out  into  a  German  mistiness.  But  I  speak 
of  it  with  the  imperfect  knowledge  of  one  who  was 
never  able  to  read  it  quite  through,  and  I  have  really 
no  right  to  speak  of  it.  The  book  of  his  that  pleased  me 
most  was  Edelweiss,  which,  though  the  story  was  some- 
what too  catastrophical,  seemed  to  me  admirably  good 
and  true.  I  still  think  it  very  delicately  done,  and 
with  a  deep  insight ;  but  there  is  something  in  all  Auer- 
bach's  work  which  in  the  retrospect  affects  me  as  if  it 
dealt  with  pigmies. 


XXXIII 

CERTAIN    PREFERENCES    AND   EXPERIENCES 

I  HAVE  always  loved  history,  wliether  in  the  annals 
of  peoples  or  in  the  lives  of  persons,  and  I  have  at  all 
times  read  it.  I  am  not  sure  but  I  rather  prefer  it  to 
fiction,  though  I  am  aware  that  in  looking  back  over 
this  record  of  my  literary  passions  I  must  seem  to  have 
cared  for  very  little  besides  fiction,  I  read  at  the  time 
I  have  just  been  speaking  of,  nearly  all  the  new  poetry 
as  it  came  out,  and  I  constantly  recurred  to  it  in  its 
mossier  sources,  where  it  sprang  from  the  green  Eng- 
lish ground,  or  trickled  from  the  antique  urns  of  Italy. 

I  do  not  think  that  I  have  ever  cared  much  for  meta- 
physics, or  to  read  much  in  that  way,  but  from  time  to 
time  I  have  done  something  of  it. 

Travels,  of  course,  I  have  read  as  part  of  the  great 
human  story,  and  autobiography  has  at  times  appeared 
to  me  the  most  delightful  reading  in  the  world ;  I  have 
a  taste  in  it  that  rejects  nothing,  though  I  have  never 
enjoyed  any  autobiographies  so  much  as  those  of  such 
Italians  as  have  reasoned  of  themselves. 

I  suppose  I  have  not  been  a  great  reader  of  the 
drama,  and  I  do  not  know  that  I  have  ever  greatly 
relished  any  plays  but  those  of  Shakespeare  and  Gol- 
doni,  and  two  or  three  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and 
one  or  so  of  Marlow's,  and  all  of  Ibsen's  and  Maeter- 
linck's. The  taste  for  the  old  English  dramatists  I  be- 
lieve I  have  never  formed. 

173 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

Criticism,  ever  since  I  filled  myself  so  full  of  it  in 
mj  boj'hood,  I  have  not  cared  for,  and  often  I  have 
found  it  repulsive. 

I  have  a  fondness  for  books  of  popular  science,  per- 
haps because  they  too  are  part  of  the  human  story. 

I  have  read  somewhat  of  the  theology  of  the  Sweden- 
borgian  faith  I  was  brought  up  in,  but  I  have  not 
read  other  theological  works;  and  I  do  not  apologize 
for  not  liking  any.  The  Bible  itself  was  not  much 
known  to  me  at  an  age  when  most  children  have  been 
obliged  to  read  it  several  times  over ;  the  gospels  were 
indeed  familiar,  and  they  have  always  been  to  me  the 
supreme  human  story;  but  the  rest  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment I  had  not  read  when  a  man  grown,  and  only 
passages  of  the  Old  Testament,  like  the  story  of  the 
Creation,  and  the  story  of  Joseph,  and  the  poems  of 
Job  and  Ecclesiastes,  with  occasional  Psalms.  I  there- 
fore came  to  the  Scriptures  with  a  sense  at  once  fresh 
and  mature,  and  I  can  never  be  too  glad  that  I  learned 
to  see  them  under  the  vaster  horizon  and  in  the  truer 
perspectives  of  experience. 

Again  as  lights  on  the  human  story  I  have  liked  to 
read  such  books  of  medicine  as  have  fallen  in  my  way, 
and  I  seldom  take  up  a  medical  periodical  without 
reading  of  all  the  cases  it  describes,  and  in  fact  every 
article  in  it. 

But  I  did  not  mean  to  make  even  this  slight  departure 
from  the  main  business  of  these  papers,  which  is  to 
confide  my  literary  passions  to  the  reader ;  he  probably 
has  had  a  great  many  of  his  own.  I  think  I  may  class 
the  "  Ring  and  the  Book "  among  them,  though  I 
have  never  been  otherwise  a  devotee  of  Browning.  But 
I  was  still  newly  home  from  Italy,  or  away  from  home, 
when  that  poem  appeared,  and  whether  or  not  it  was 
because  it  took  me  so  with  the  old  enchantment  of  that 

174 


CERTAIN  PREFERENCES   AND   EXPERIENCES 

land,  I  gave  my  heart  promptly  to  it.  Of  course,  there 
are  terrible  longueurs  in  it,  and  you  do  get  tired  of  the 
same  story  told  over  and  over  from  the  different  points 
of  view,  and  yet  it  is  snch  a  great  story,  and  unfolded 
with  such  a  magnificent  breadth  and  noble  fulness,  that 
one  who  blames  it  lightly  blames  himself  heavil_y. 
There  are  certain  books  of  it — "  Caponsacchi's  story," 
"  Pompilia's  story,"  and  "  Count  Guido's  story  " — that 
I  think  ought  to  rank  with  the  greatest  poetry  ever  writ- 
ten, and  that  have  a  direct,  dramatic  expression  of  the 
fact  and  character,  which  is  without  rival.  There  is  a 
noble  and  lofty  pathos  in  the  close  of  Caponsacchi's 
statement,  an  artless  and  manly  break  from  his  self- 
control  throughout,  that  seems  to  me  the  last  possible 
effect  in  its  kind;  and  Pompilia's  story  holds  all  of 
womanhood  in  it,  the  purity,  the  passion,  the  tender- 
ness, the  helplessness.  But  if  I  begin  to  praise  this  or 
any  of  the  things  I  have  liked,  I  do  not  know  when  I 
should  stop.  Yes,  as  I  think  it  over,  the  "  Eing  and 
the  Book  "  appears  to  me  one  of  the  great  few  poems 
whose  splendor  can  never  suffer  lasting  eclipse,  how- 
ever it  may  have  presently  fallen  into  abeyance.  If  it 
had  impossibly  come  down  to  us  from  some  elder  time, 
or  had  not  been  so  perfectly  modern  in  its  recognition 
of  feeling  and  motives  ignored  by  the  less  conscious 
poetry  of  the  past,  it  might  be  ranked  with  the  great 
epics. 

Of  other  modern  poets  I  have  read  some  things  of 
William  Morris,  like  the  "  Life  and  Death  of  Jason," 
the  "  Story  of  Gudrun,"  and  the  "  Trial  of  Guinevere," 
with  a  pleasure  little  less  than  passionate,  and  I  have 
equally  liked  certain  pieces  of  Dante  Rossetti.  I  have 
had  a  high  joy  in  some  of  the  great  minor  poems  of 
Emerson,  where  the  goddess  moves  over  Concord 
meadows  with  a  gait  that  is  Greek,  and  her  sandalled 

175 


-MY  TJTETJAP.Y   PASSTONR 

tread  expresses  a  high  scorn  of  the  india-nibher  boots 
that  the  American  muse  so  often  gets  about  in. 

The  "  Commemoration  Ode  "  of  Lowell  has  also  been 
a  source  from  which  I  drank  something  of  the  divine 
ecstasy  of  the  poet's  own  exalted  mood,  and  I  would 
set  this  level  with  the  B'kjIow  Papers,  high  above  all 
his  other  work,  and  chief  of  the  things  this  age  of  our 
country  shall  be  remembered  by.  Holmes  I  always 
loved,  and  not  for  his  wit  alone,  which  is  so  obvious 
to  liking,  but  for  those  rarer  and  richer  strains  of  his 
in  which  he  show^s  himself  the  lover  of  nature  and  the 
brother  of  men.  The  deep  spiritual  insight,  the  celes- 
tial music,  and  the  brooding  tenderness  of  Whittier 
have  always  taken  me  more  than  his  fierier  appeals  and 
his  civic  virtues,  though  I  do  not  underrate  the  value 
of  these  in  his  verse. 

My  acquaintance  with  these  modern  poets,  and  many 
I  do  not  name  because  they  are  so  many,  has  been 
continuous  with  their  work,  and  my  pleasure  in  it  not 
inconstant  if  not  equal.  I  have  spoken  before  of  Long- 
fellow as  one  of  my  first  passions,  and  I  have  never 
ceased  to  delight  in  him;  but  some  of  the  very  newest 
and  youngest  of  our  poets  have  given  me  thrills  of 
happiness,  for  which  life  has  become  lastingly  sweeter. 

Long  after  I  had  thought  never  to  read  it — in  fact 
when  I  was  nel  raezzo  del  cammin  di  nostra  vita — I 
read  Milton's  "  Paradise  Lost,"  and  found  in  it  a 
majestic  beauty  that  justified  to  me  the  fame  it  wears, 
and  eclipsed  the  w^orth  of  those  lesser  poems  which  T 
had  ignorantly  accounted  his  worthiest.  In  fact,  it  was 
one  of  the  literary  passions  of  the  time  I  speak  of,  and  it 
shared  my  devotion  for  the  novels  of  Tourguenief  and 
(shall  I  own  it?)  the  romances  of  Cherbuliez.  After 
all,  it  is  best  to  be  honest,  and  if  it  is  not  best,  it  is  at 

1Y6 


CERTAIN   rilEFERENCES   AND   EXPEIIIENCES 

least  easiest ;  it  involves  the  fewest  embarrassing  conse- 
quences ;  and  if  I  confess  the  spell  that  the  Revenge  of 
Joseph  Noircl  cast  upon  me  for  a  time,  perhaps  I  shall 
be  able  to  whisper  the  reader  behind  my  hand  that  I 
have  never  yet  read  the  "  J!Cneid "  of  Virgil ;  the 
"  Georgics,"  yes ;  but  the  "  iEneid,"  no.  Some  time, 
however,  I  expect  to  read  it  and  to  like  it  innnenscly. 
That  is  often  the  case  with  things  that  I  have  held  aloof 
from  indefinitely. 

One  fact  of  my  experience  which  the  reader  may  find 
interesting  is  that  when  I  am  writing  steadily  I  have 
little  relish  for  reading.  I  fancy  that  reading  is  not 
merely  a  pastime  when  it  is  apparently  the  merest 
pastime,  but  that  a  certain  measure  of  mind-stuff  is 
used  up  in  it,  and  that  if  you  are  using  up  all  the  mind 
stuff  you  have,  much  or  little,  in  some  other  way,  you  do 
not  read  because  you  have  not  the  mind-stuff  for  it.  At 
any  rate  it  is  in  this  sort  only  that  I  can  account  for 
my  failure  to  read  a  great  deal  during  four  years  of 
the  amplest  quiet  that  I  spent  in  the  country  at  Belmont, 
whither  we  removed  from  Cambridge.  I  had  promised 
myself  that  in  this  quiet,  now  that  I  had  given  up  re- 
viewing, and  wrote  little  or  nothing  in  the  magazine 
but  my  stories,  I  should  again  read  purely  for  the 
pleasure  of  it,  as  I  had  in  the  early  days  before  the 
critical  purpose  had  qualified  it  with  a  bitter  alloy. 
But  I  found  that  not  being  forced  to  read  a  number  of 
books  each  month,  so  that  I  might  write  about  them,  I 
did  not  read  at  all,  comparatively  speaking.  To  be 
sure  I  dawdled  over  a  great  many  books  that  T  had  read 
before,  and  a  number  of  memoirs  and  biographies,  but 
I  had  no  intense  pleasure  from  reading  in  that  time, 
and  have  no  passions  to  record  of  it.  It  may  liave  been 
a  period  when  no  new  thing  happened  in  literature 
deeply  to  stir  one's  interest;  I  only  state  the  fact  con- 

177 


MY  LITEEAEY  PASSIONS 

ccrning  myself,  and  suggest  the  most  plausible  theory  I 
can  think  of. 

I  wish  also  to  note  another  incident,  which  may  or 
may  not  have  its  psj'chological  value.  An  important 
event  of  these  years  was  a  long  sickness  which  kept 
me  helpless  some  seven  or  eight  weeks,  when  I  was 
forced  to  read  in  order  to  pass  the  intolerable  time. 
But  in  this  misery  I  found  that  I  could  not  read  any- 
thing of  a  dramatic  cast,  whether  in  the  form  of  plays 
or  of  novels.  The  mere  sight  of  the  printed  page, 
broken  up  in  dialogue,  was  anguish.  Yet  it  was  not 
the  excitement  of  the  fiction  that  I  dreaded,  for  I  con- 
sumed great  numbers  of  narratives  of  travel,  and  was 
not  in  the  least  troubled  by  hairbreadth  escapes,  or 
shipwrecks,  or  perils  from  wild  beasts  or  deadly  ser- 
pents ;  it  was  the  dramatic  effect  contrived  by  the  play- 
■UTight  or  novelist,  and  worked  up  to  in  the  speech 
of  his  characters  that  I  could  not  bear.  I  found  a  like 
impossible  stress  from  the  Sunday  newspaper  which  a 
mistaken  friend  sent  in  to  me,  and  which  with  its 
scare  -  headings,  and  artfully  -  wrought  sensations,  had 
the  effect  of  fiction,  as  in  fact  it  largely  was. 

At  the  end  of  four  years  we  went  abroad  again,  and 
travel  took  away  the  appetite  for  reading  as  completely 
as  writing  did.  I  recall  nothing  read  in  that  year  in 
Europe  which  moved  me,  and  I  think  I  read  very  little, 
except  the  local  histories  of  the  Tuscan  cities  which  I 
afterwards  wrote  of. 


XXXIV 

VALDES,  GALDOS,  VERGA,  ZOLA,  TROLLOPE,  HARDY 

In  fact,  it  was  not  till  I  returned,  and  took  up  my  life 
again  in  Boston,  in  the  old  atmosphere  of  work,  that 
I  turned  once  more  to  books.  Even  then  I  had  to  wait 
for  the  time  when  I  undertook  a  critical  department 
in  one  of  the  magazines,  before  I  felt  the  rise  of  the 
old  enthusiasm  for  an  author.  That  is  to  say,  I  had  to 
begin  reading  for  business  again  before  I  began  reading 
for  pleasure.  One  of  the  first  great  pleasures  which  I 
had  upon  these  terms  was  in  the  book  of  a  contemporary 
Spanish  author.  This  was  the  Marta  y  Maria  of  Ar- 
mando Palacio  Valdes,  a  novelist  who  delights  me  be- 
yond words  by  his  friendly  and  abundant  humor,  his 
feeling  for  character,  and  his  subtle  insight.  I  like 
every  one  of  his  books  that  I  have  read,  and  I  believe 
that  I  have  read  nearly  every  one  that  he  has  written. 
As  I  mention  Riverito,  Maximina,  Tin  Idilio  de  un  In- 
ferno, La  Hermana  de  San  Sulpizio,  El  Cuarto  Poder, 
Espuma,  the  mere  names  conjure  up  the  scenes  and 
events  that  have  moved  me  to  tears  and  laughter,  and 
filled  me  with  a  vivid  sense  of  the  life  portrayed  in 
them.  I  think  the  Marta  y  Maria  one  of  the  most  truth- 
ful and  profound  fictions  I  have  read,  and  Maximina 
one  of  the  most  pathetic,  and  La  Hermana  de  San  Sid- 
pizio  one  of  the  most  amusing.  Fortunately,  these 
books  of  Valdes's  have  nearly  all  been  translated,  and 

179 


MY  LITEr.AET   PASSIONS 

ibe  reader  may  test  the  matter  in  English,  though  it 
necessarily  halts  somewhat  behind  the  Spanish. 

I  do  not  know  whether  the  Spaniards  themselves 
rank  Valdes  with  Galdos  or  not,  and  I  have  no  wish 
to  decide  npon  their  relative  merits.  Thev  are  both 
present  passions  of  mine,  and  I  may  say  of  the  Dona 
Perfecla  of  Galdos  tliat  no  book,  if  I  except  those  of 
the  greatest  Russians,  has  given  me  a  keener  and  deeper 
impression ;  it  is  infinitely  pathetic,  and  is  full  of 
humor,  which,  if  more  caustic  than  that  of  Valdes,  is 
not  less  delicious.  But  I  like  all  the  books  of  Galdos 
that  I  have  read,  and  though  he  seems  to  have  worked 
more  tardily  out  of  his  romanticism  than  Valdes,  since 
he  has  worked  finally  into  such  realism  as  that  of  Leon 
Eoch,  his  greatness  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired. 

I  have  read  one  of  the  books  of  Emilia  Pardo-Bazan, 
called  Morriha,  which  must  rank  her  with  the  great 
realists  of  her  country  and  age ;  she,  too,  has  that  humor 
of  her  race,  which  brings  us  nearer  the  Spanish  than 
any  other  non- Anglo-Saxon  people. 

A  contemporary  Italian,  whom  I  like  hardly  less 
than  these  noble  Spaniards,  is  Giovamii  Verga,  who 
wrote  I  Malavoglia,  or,  as  we  call  it  in  English,  Tlie 
House  hy  ilic  Medlar  Tree:  a  story  of  infinite  beauty, 
tenderness  and  truth.  As  I  have  said  before,  I  think 
with  Zola  that  Giacometti,  the  Italian  author  of  "  La 
^Rforte  Civile,"  has  written  almost  the  greatest  play,  all 
round,  of  modern  times. 

But  what  shall  I  say  of  Zola  himself,  and  my  admira- 
tion of  his  epic  greatness?  About  his  material  there 
is  no  disputing  among  people  of  our  Puritanic  tradi- 
tion. It  is  simply  abhorrent,  but  when  you  have  once 
granted  him  his  material  for  his  own  use,  it  is  idle  and 
foolish  to  deny  his  power.  Every  literary  theory  of 
mine  was  contrary  to  him  when  I  took  up  L'Assommoir, 

180 


VALDES,  GALDOS,  VERGA,  ZOLA,  TROLLOPE 

thuugli  uuc'uuaciously  I  had  always  been  as  inucJj  of 
a  realist  as  1  could,  but  the  book  possessed  me  with 
the  same  fascination  that  I  felt  the  other  day  in  read- 
ing his  L" Argent.  The  critics  know  now  that  Zola  is 
not  the  realist  he  used  to  fancy  himself,  and  he  is  full 
of  the  best  qualities  of  the  romanticism  he  has  hated 
so  much ;  but  for  what  he  is,  there  is  but  one  novelist 
of  our  time,  or  of  any,  that  outmasters  him,  and  that 
is  Tolstoy.  For  my  own  part,  I  think  that  the  books 
of  Zola  are  not  immoral,  but  they  are  indecent  through 
the  facts  that  they  nakedly  represent ;  they  are  infinitely 
more  moral  than  tlie  books  of  any  other  French  novelist. 
This  may  not  be  saying  a  great  deal,  but  it  is  saying  the 
truth,  and  I  do  not  mind  owning  that  he  has  been  one 
of  my  great  literary  passions,  almost  as  great  as  Flau- 
bert, and  greater  than  Daudet  or  Maupassant,  though 
I  have  profoundly  appreciated  the  exquisite  artistry  of 
both  these.  ^N^o  French  writer,  however,  has  moved  me 
so  much  as  the  Spanish,  for  the  French  are  wanting  in 
the  humor  which  endears  these,  and  is  the  quintessence 
of  their  charm. 

You  cannot  be  at  perfect  ease  with  a  friend  who  does 
not  joke,  and  I  suppose  this  is  what  deprived  me  of  a 
final  satisfaction  in  the  company  of  Anthony  Trollope, 
who  jokes  heavily  or  not  at  all,  and  whom  I  should 
otherwise  make  bold  to  declare  the  greatest  of  English 
novelists ;  as  it  is,  I  must  put  before  him  Jane  Austen, 
whose  books,  late  in  life,  have  been  a  youthful  rapture 
with  me.  Even  without  much  humor  Trollope's  books 
have  been  a  vast  pleasure  to  me  through  their  simple 
truthfulness.  Perhaps  if  they  were  more  humorous 
they  would  not  be  so  true  to  the  British  life  and 
character  present  in  them  in  the  whole  length  and 
breadth  of  its  expansive  commonplaceness.  It  is  their 
serious  fidelity  which  gives  them  a  value  unique  in 

181 


MY   LITERAHY   PASSIONS 

literature,  and  which  if  it  were  carefull}'  analyzed 
would  afford  a  principle  of  the  same  quality  in  an 
author  ulio  was  undoubtedly  one  of  the  finest  of  artists 
as  well  as  the  most  Philistine  of  men. 

I  came  rather  late,  but  I  came  with  all  the  ardor  of 
what  seems  my  perennial  literary  youth,  to  the  love  of 
Thomas  Hardy,  whom  I  first  knew  in  his  story  A  Pair 
of  Blue  Eyes.  As  usual,  after  I  had  read  this  book 
and  felt  the  new  charm  in  it,  I  washed  to  read  the 
books  of  no  other  author,  and  to  read  his  books  over 
and  over.  I  love  even  the  faults  of  Hardy;  I  will  let 
him  play  me  any  trick  he  chooses  (and  he  is  not  above 
playing  tricks,  when  he  seems  to  get  tired  of  his  story 
or  perplexed  with  it),  if  only  he  will  go  on  making  his 
peasants  talk,  and  his  rather  uncertain  ladies  get  in  and 
out  of  love,  and  serve  themselves  of  every  chance  that 
fortune  offers  them  of  having  their  own  way.  We 
shrink  from  the  unmorality  of  the  Latin  races,  but 
Hardy  has  divined  in  the  heart  of  our  o-rti  race  a  linger- 
ing heathenism,  which,  if  not  Greek,  has  certainly  been 
no  more  baptized  than  the  neo-hellenism  of  the  Pari- 
sians. His  heroines  especially  exemplify  it,  and  I 
should  be  safe  in  saying  that  his  EiheTbertas,  his  Eu- 
stacias,  his  Elfridas,  his  Batlishehas,  his  Fancies,  are 
wholly  pagan.  T  should  not  dare  to  ask  how  much  of 
their  charm  came  from  that  fact;  and  the  author  does 
not  fail  to  show  you  how  much  harm,  so  that  it  is  not  on 
my  conscience.  His  people  live  very  close  to  the  heart 
of  nature,  and  no  one,  unless  it  is  Tourguenief,  gives 
you  a  richer  and  sweeter  sense  of  her  unity  with  human 
nature.  Hardy  is  a  great  poet  as  well  as  a  great 
humorist,  and  if  he  were  not  a  great  artist  also  his 
humor  would  be  enough  to  endear  him  to  me. 


XXXV 

TOLSTOY 

I  COME  now,  though  not  quite  in  the  order  of  time, 
to  the  noblest  of  all  these  enthusiasms — namely,  my 
devotion  for  the  writings  of  Lyof  Tolstoy,  I  should 
wish  to  speak  of  him  with  his  own  incomj)arable 
truth,  yet  I  do  not  know  how  to  give  a  notion  of  his 
influence  without  the  effect  of  exaggeration.  As  much 
as  one  merely  human  being  can  help  another  I  believe 
that  he  has  helped  me;  he  has  not  influenced  me  in 
aesthetics  only,  but  in  ethics,  too,  so  that  I  can  never 
again  see  life  in  the  way  I  saw  it  before  I  knew  him. 
Tolstoy  awakens  in  his  reader  the  will  to  be  a  man; 
not  effectively,  not  spectacularly,  but  simply,  really. 
He  leads  you  back  to  the  only  true  ideal,  away  from 
that  false  standard  of  the  gentleman,  to  the  Man  who 
sought  not  to  be  distinguished  from  other  men,  but 
identified  with  them,  to  that  Presence  in  which  the 
finest  gentleman  shows  his  alloy  of  vanity,  and  the 
greatest  genius  shrinks  to  the  measure  of  his  miserable 
egotism.  I  learned  from  Tolstoy  to  try  character  and 
motive  by  no  other  test,  and  though  I  am  perpetually 
false  to  that  sublime  ideal  myself,  still  the  ideal  re- 
mains with  me,  to  make  me  ashamed  that  I  am  not 
true  to  it.  Tolstoy  gave  me  heart  to  hope  that  the 
world  may  yet  be  made  over  in  the  image  of  Him  who 
died  for  it,  when  all  Ctesars  things  shall  be  finally 
rendered  unto  CiTsar,  and  men  shall  come  into  their 

183 


MY   LITEKARY   PASSIONS 

o^vn,  into  the  right  to  labor  and  the  right  to  enjoy  the 
fruits  of  their  labor,  each  one  master  of  himself  and 
servant  to  every  other.  lie  taught  me  to  see  life  not 
as  a  chase  of  a  forever  impossible  personal  happiness, 
but  as  a  field  for  endeavor  towards  the  happiness  of  the 
whole  human  family ;  and  I  can  never  lose  this  vision, 
however  I  close  my  eyes,  and  strive  to  see  my  own 
interest  as  the  highest  good.  He  gave  me  new  criterions, 
new  principles,  which,  after  all,  were  those  that  are 
taught  us  in  our  earliest  childhood,  before  we  have 
come  to  the  evil  wisdom  of  the  world.  As  I  read  his 
different  ethical  books,  What  to  Do,  My  Confession, 
and  Ml)  Religion,  I  recognized  their  truth  with  a  rapt- 
ure such  as  I  have  known  in  no  other  reading,  and  I 
rendered  them  my  allegiance,  heart  and  soul,  with 
whatever  sickness  of  the  one  and  despair  of  the  other. 
They  have  it  yet,  and  I  believe  they  will  have  it  while 
I  live.  It  is  with  inexpressible  astonishment  that  I 
hear  them  attainted  of  pessimism,  as  if  the  teaching 
of  a  man  whose  ideal  was  simple  goodness  must  mean 
the  prevalence  of  evil.  The  way  he  showed  me  seemed 
indeed  impossible  to  my  will,  but  to  my  conscience  it 
was  and  is  the  only  possible  way.  If  there  is  any 
point  on  which  he  has  not  convinced  my  reason  it  is 
that  of  our  ability  to  walk  this  narrow  way  alone. 
Even  there  he  is  logical,  but  as  Zola  subtly  distin- 
guishes in  speaking  of  Tolstoy's  essay  on  "  Money,"  he 
is  not  reasonable.  Solitude  enfeebles  and  palsies,  and 
it  is  as  comrades  and  brothers  that  men  must  save  the 
world  from  itself,  rather  than  themselves  from  the 
world.  It  was  so  the  earliest  Christians,  who  had  all 
things  common,  understood  the  life  of  Christ,  and  I 
believe  that  the  latest  will  understand  it  so. 

I  have  spoken  first  of  the  ethical  works  of  Tolstoy, 
because  they  are  of  the  first  importance  to  me,  but  I 

184 


TOLSTOY 

jliink  (li;il  Ills  trstlietical  works  are  as  perfect.  To  my 
thiuking  tliev  traiisecurl  in  trutli,  wliieh  is  the  highest 
beauty,  all  other  works  of  fiction  that  Jiave  been  written, 
and  I  believe  that  they  do  this  because  they  obey  the 
law  of  the  author's  own  life.  His  conscience  is  one 
ethically  and  one  aesthetically ;  with  his  will  to  be  true 
to  himself  he  cannot  be  false  to  his  knowledge  of  others. 
I  thought  the  last  word  in  literary  art  had  been  said  to 
me  by  the  novels  of  Tourguenief,  but  it  seemed  like  the 
first,  merely,  when  I  began  to  acquaint  myself  with  the 
simpler  method  of  Tolstoy.  I  came  to  it  by  accident, 
and  without  any  manner  of  preoccupation  in  The  Cos- 
saclcs,  one  of  his  early  books,  which  had  been  on  my 
shelves  unread  for  five  or  six  years.  I  did  not  know 
even  Tolstoy's  name  when  I  opened  it,  and  it  was  with 
a  kind  of  amaze  that  I  read  it,  and  felt  word  by  word, 
and  line  by  line,  the  truth  of  a  new  art  in  it. 

I  do  not  know  how  it  is  that  the  great  Russians 
have  the  secret  of  simplicity.  Some  say  it  is  because 
they  have  not  a  long  literary  past  and  are  not  conven- 
tionalized by  the  usage  of  many  generations  of  other 
writers,  but  this  will  hardly  account  for  the  brotherly 
directness  of  their  dealing  with  human  nature ;  the 
absence  of  experience  elsewhere  characterizes  the  art- 
ist with  crudeness,  and  simplicity  is  the  last  effect  of 
knowledge.  Tolstoy  is,  of  course,  the  first  of  them  in 
this  supreme  grace.  He  has  not  only  Tourguenief's 
transparency  of  style,  unclouded  by  any  mist  of  the 
personality  which  we  mistakenly  value  in  style,  and 
which  ought  no  more  to  be  there  than  the  artist's  per- 
sonality should  be  in  a  portrait ;  but  he  has  a  method 
which  not  only  seems  without  artifice,  but  is  so.  I 
can  get  at  the  manner  of  most  writers,  and  tell  what 
it  is,  but  I  should  be  baffled  to  tell  what  Tolstoy's 
manner  is;  perhaps  he  has  no  manner.     This  appears 

185 


MY   LITEEAKY   PASSIONS 

to  me  true  of  his  novels,  ■which,  with  their  vast  variety 
of  character  and  incident,  are  alike  in  their  single  en- 
deavor to  get  the  persons  living  before  you,  both  in 
their  action  and  in  the  peculiarly  dramatic  interpreta- 
tion of  their  emotion  and  cogitation.  There  are  plenty 
of  novelists  to  tell  you  that  their  characters  felt  and 
thought  so  and  so,  but  you  have  to  take  it  on  trust; 
Tolstoy  alone  makes  you  know  how  and  why  it  was  so 
with  them  and  not  otheru'ise.  If  there  is  anything  in 
him  which  can  be  copied  or  burlesqued  it  is  this  abil- 
ity of  his  to  show  men  inwardly  as  well  as  outwardly ; 
it  is  the  only  trait  of  his  which  I  can  put  my  hand  on. 

After  The  Cossacks  I  read  Anna  Karenina  with  a 
deepening  sense  of  the  author's  unrivalled  greatness.  I 
thought  that  I  saw  through  his  eyes  a  human  affair  of 
that  most  sorrowful  sort  as  it  must  appear  to  the  In- 
finite Compassion ;  the  book  is  a  sort  of  revelation  of 
human  nature  in  circumstances  that  have  been  so  per- 
petually lied  about  that  we  have  almost  lost  the  faculty 
of  perceiving  the  truth  concerning  an  illicit  love. 
When  3^ou  have  once  read  Anna  Karenina  you  know 
how  fatally  miserable  and  essentially  unhappy  such  a 
love  must  be.  But  the  character  of  Karenin  himself 
is  quite  as  important  as  the  intrigue  of  Anna  and 
Vronsky.  It  is  wonderful  how  such  a  man,  cold,  Philis- 
tine and  even  mean  in  certain  ways,  towers  into  a 
sublimity  unknown  (to  me,  at  least),  in  fiction  when 
he  forgives,  and  yet  knows  that  he  cannot  forgive  with 
dignity.  There  is  something  crucial,  and  something 
triumphant,  not  beyond  the  power,  but  hitherto  beyond 
the  imagination  of  men  in  this  effect,  which  is  not 
solicited,  not  forced,  not  in  the  least  romantic,  but 
comes  naturally,  almost  inevitably,  from  the  make  of 
man. 

The  vast  prospects,  the  far-reaching  perspectives  of 
186 


TOLSTOY 

War  and  Peace  made  it  as  great  a  surprise  for  me  in 
the  historical  novel  as  Anna  Karenina  had  been  in  the 
study  of  contemporary  life ;  and  its  people  and  interests 
did  not  seem  more  remote,  since  they  are  of  a  civiliza- 
tion always  as  strange  and  of  a  humanity  always  as 
known. 

I  read  some  shorter  stories  of  Tolstoy's  before  I  came 
to  this  greatest  work  of  his :  I  read  Scenes  of  the  Siege 
of  Sehastopol,  which  is  so  much  of  the  same  quality  as 
War  and  Peace;  and  I  read  PoUcoushha  and  most  of  his 
short  stories  with  a  sense  of  my  unity  with  their  people 
such  as  I  had  never  felt  with  the  people  of  other  fiction. 

His  didactic  stories,  like  all  stories  of  the  sort,  dwin- 
dle into  allegories;  perhaps  they  do  their  work  the 
better  for  this,  with  the  simple  intelligences  they  ad- 
dress; but  I  think  that  where  Tolstoy  becomes  impa- 
tient of  his  office  of  artist,  and  prefers  to  be  directly  a 
teacher,  he  robs  himself  of  more  than  half  his  strength 
with  those  he  can  move  only  through  the  realization 
of  themselves  in  others.  The  simple  pathos,  and  the 
apparent  indirectness  of  such  a  tale  as  that  of  Poli- 
coushJca,  the  peasant  conscript,  is  of  vastly  more  value 
to  the  world  at  large  than  all  his  parables;  and  The 
Death  of  Ivan  Ilyitch,  the  Philistine  worldling,  will 
turn  the  hearts  of  many  more  from  the  love  of  the 
world  than  such  pale  fables  of  the  early  Christian  life 
as  "  Work  while  ye  have  the  Light."  A  man's  gifts  are 
not  given  him  for  nothing,  and  the  man  who  has  the 
great  gift  of  dramatic  fiction  has  no  right  to  cast  it 
away  or  to  let  it  rust  out  in  disuse. 

Terrible  as  the  Kreutzer  Sonata  was,  it  had  a  moral 
effect  dramatically  which  it  lost  altogether  when  the 
author  descended  to  exegesis,  and  applied  to  marriage 
the  lesson  of  one  evil  marriage.  In  fine,  Tolstoy  is 
certainly  not  to  be  held  up  as  infallible.     He  is  very 

187 


MY   LITERARY   PASSIONS 

distinctly  fallible,  but  I  think  his  life  is  not  less  in- 
structive because  in  certain  things  it  seems  a  failure. 
There  was  but  one  life  ever  lived  upon  the  earth  which 
was  without  failure,  and  that  was  Christ's,  whose  err- 
ing and  stumbling  follower  Tolstoy  is.  There  is  no 
other  example,  no  other  ideal,  and  the  chief  use  of 
Tolstoy  is  to  enforce  this  fact  in  our  age,  after  nineteen 
centuries  of  hopeless  endeavor  to  substitute  ceremony 
for  character,  and  the  creed  for  the  life.  I  recognize 
the  truth  of  this  without  pretending  to  have  been 
changed  in  anything  but  my  point  of  view  of  it.  What 
I  feel  sure  is  that  I  can  never  look  at  life  in  the  mean 
and  sordid  way  that  I  did  before  I  read  Tolstoy. 

Artistically,  he  has  shown  me  a  greatness  that  he 
can  never  teach  me.  I  am  long  past  the  age  when  I 
could  wish  to  form  myself  upon  another  writer,  and  I 
do  not  think  I  could  now  insensibly  take  on  the  like- 
ness of  another;  but  his  work  has  been  a  revelation 
and  a  delight  to  me,  such  as  I  am  sure  I  can  never 
know  again.  I  do  not  believe  that  in  the  whole  course 
of  my  reading,  and  not  even  in  the  early  moment  of 
my  literary  enthusiasms,  I  have  known  such  utter  satis- 
faction in  any  writer,  and  this  supreme  joy  has  come 
to  me  at  a  time  of  life  when  new  friendships,  not  to 
say  new  passions,  are  rare  and  reluctant.  It  is  as  if 
the  best  wine  at  this  high  feast  where  I  have  sat  so  long 
had  been  kept  for  the  last,  and  I  need  not  deny  a  miracle 
in  it  in  order  to  attest  my  skill  in  judging  vintages.  In 
fact,  I  prefer  to  believe  that  my  life  has  been  full  of 
miracles,  and  that  the  good  has  always  come  to  me  at 
the  right  time,  so  that  I  could  profit  most  by  it.  I  be- 
lieve if  I  had  not  turned  the  corner  of  my  fiftieth  year, 
when  I  first  knew  Tolstoy,  T  should  not  have  been  able 
to  know  him  as  fully  as  I  did.  He  has  been  to  me  that 
final  consciousness,  which  he  speaks  of  so  wisely  in  his 


MY  LITERARY  PASSIONS 

essay  on  "  Life."  I  came  in  it  to  the  knowledge  of  my- 
self in  ways  I  had  not  dreamt  of  before,  and  began  at 
least  to  discern  my  relations  to  the  race,  without  which 
we  are  each  nothing.  The  supreme  art  in  literature 
had  its  highest  effect  in  making  me  set  art  forever  be- 
low humanity,  and  it  is  with  the  wish  to  offer  the  great- 
est homage  to  his  heart  and  mind,  which  any  man  can 
pay  another,  that  I  close  this  record  with  the  name  of 
Lyof  Tolstoy. 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION" 


The  question  of  a  final  criterion  for  the  appreciation 
of  art  is  one  that  perpetually  recurs  to  those  interested 
in  any  sort  of  a?sthetic  endeavor.  Mr.  John  Addington 
Symonds,  in  a  chapter  of  The  Renaissance  in  Italy 
treating  of  the  Bolognese  school  of  painting,  which  once 
had  so  great  cry,  and  was  vaunted  the  supreme  exemplar 
of  the  grand  style,  but  which  he  now  believes  fallen  into 
lasting  contempt  for  its  emptiness  and  souUessness, 
seeks  to  determine  whether  there  can  be  an  enduring 
criterion  or  not ;  and  his  conclusion  is  applicable  to 
literature  as  to  the  other  arts.  "  Our  hope,"  he  says, 
"  with  regard  to  the  unity  of  taste  in  the  future  then 
is,  that  all  sentimental  or  academical  seekings  after 
the  ideal  having  been  abandoned,  momentary  theories 
founded  upon  idiosyncratic  or  temporary  partialities  ex- 
ploded, and  nothing  accepted  but  what  is  solid  and  posi- 
tive, the  scientific  spirit  shall  make  men  progressively 
more  and  more  conscious  of  these  bleibende  Verfi'dlt- 
nisse,  more  and  more  capable  of  living  in  the  whole ; 
also,  that  in  proportion  as  we  gain  a  firmer  hold  upon 
our  own  place  in  the  world,  we  shall  come  to  comprehend 
with  more  instinctive  certitude  what  is  simple,  natural, 
and  honest,  welcoming  with  gladness  all  artistic  prod- 
ucts that  exhibit  these  qualities.  The  perception  of 
the  enlightened  man  will  then  be  the  task  of  a  healthy 
person  who  has  made  himself  acquainted  with  the  laws 
of  evolution  in  art  and  in  society,  and  is  able  to  test  the 

193 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

excellence  of  work  in  any  stage  from  immaturity  to 
decadence  by  discerning  what  there  is  of  truth,  sincerity, 
and  natural  vigor  in  it." 


That  is  to  say,  as  I  understand,  that  moods  and  tastes 
and  fashions  change;  people  fancy  now  this  and  now 
that;  but  what  is  unpretentious  and  what  is  true  is 
always  beautiful  and  good,  and  nothing  else  is  so.  This 
is  not  saying  that  fantastic  and  monstrous  and  artificial 
things  do  not  please;  everybody  knows  that  they  do 
please  immensely  for  a  time,  and  then,  after  the  lapse 
of  a  much  longer  time,  they  have  the  charm  of  the 
rococo.  Nothing  is  more  curious  than  the  charm  that 
fashion  has.  Fashion  in  women's  dress,  almost  every 
fashion,  is  somehow  delightful,  else  it  would  never  have 
been  the  fashion ;  but  if  any  one  will  look  through  a  col- 
lection of  old  fashion  j)lates,  he  must  o^vn  that  most  fash- 
ions have  been  ugly.  A  few,  which  could  be  readily 
instanced,  have  been  very  pretty,  and  even  beautiful, 
but  it  is  doubtful  if  these  have  pleased  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  people.  The  ugly  delights  as  well  as  the  beauti- 
ful, and  rot  merely  because  the  ugly  in  fashion  is  asso- 
ciated with  the  young  loveliness  of  the  women  who  wear 
the  ugly  fashions,  and  wins  a  grace  from  them,  not  be- 
cause the  vast  majority  of  mankind  are  tasteless,  but 
for  some  cause  that  is  not  perhaps  ascertainable.  It  is 
quite  as  likely  to  return  in  the  fashions  of  our  clothes 
and  houses  and  furniture,  and  poetry  and  fiction  and 
painting,  as  the  beautiful,  and  it  may  be  from  an  in- 
stinctive or  a  reasoned  sense  of  this  that  some  of  the 
extreme  naturalists  have  refused  to  make  the  old  dis- 
crimination against  it,  or  to  regard  the  ugly  as  any  less 

194 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

worthy  of  celebration  in  art  than  the  beautiful;  some 
of  them,  in  fact,  seem  to  regard  it  as  rather  more 
worthy,  if  anything.  Possibly  there  is  no  absolutely 
ugly,  no  absolutely  beautiful ;  or  possibly  the  ugly  con- 
tains always  an  element  of  the  beautiful  better  adapted 
to  the  general  appreciation  than  the  more  perfectly 
beautiful.  This  is  a  somewhat  discouraging  conjecture, 
but  I  offer  it  for  no  more  than  it  is  worth ;  and  I  do  not 
pin  my  faith  to  the  saying  of  one  whom  I  heard  denying, 
the  other  day,  that  a  thing  of  beauty  was  a  joy  forever. 
He  contended  that  Kcats's  line  should  have  read, 
"  Some  things  of  beauty  are  sometimes  joys  forever," 
and  that  any  assertion  beyond  this  was  too  hazardous. 


II 

I  SHOULD,  indeed,  prefer  another  line  of  Keats's,  if  I 
were  to  profess  any  formulated  creed,  and  should  feel 
much  safer  with  his  "  Beauty  is  Truth,  Truth  Beauty," 
than  even  with  my  friend's  reformation  of  the  more 
quoted  verse.  It  brings  us  back  to  the  solid  ground 
taken  by  Mr.  S^nnonds,  which  is  not  essentially  dif- 
ferent from  that  taken  in  the  great  Mr.  Burke's  Essay 
on  the  8uhlime  and  the  Beautiful — a  singularly  modern 
book,  considering  how  long  ago  it  was  wrote  (as  the 
great  Mr.  Steele  would  have  ^vritten  the  participle  a 
little  longer  ago),  and  full  of  a  certain  well-mannered 
and  agreeable  instruction.  In  some  things  it  is  of  that 
droll  little  eighteenth-century  world,  when  philosophy 
had  got  the  neat  little  universe  into  the  holloAV  of  its 
hand,  and  knew  just  what  it  was,  and  what  it  was  for ; 
but  it  is  quite  without  arrogance.  "  As  for  those  called 
critics,"  the  author  says,  "  they  have  generally  sought 
the  rule  of  the  arts  in  the  wrong  place ;  they  have  sought 

195 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

among  poems,  pictures,  engravings,  statues,  and  build- 
ings ;  but  art  can  never  give  the  rules  tliat  make  an  art. 
This  is,  I  believe,  the  reason  why  artists  in  general,  and 
poets  principally,  have  been  confined  in  so  narrow  a 
circle;  they  have  been  rather  imitators  of  one  another 
than  of  nature.  Critics  follow  them,  and  therefore  can 
do  little  as  guides.  I  can  judge  but  poorly  of  anything 
while  I  measure  it  by  no  other  standard  than  itself. 
The  true  standard  of  the  arts  is  in  every  man's  power ; 
and  an  easy  observation  of  the  most  common,  sometimes 
of  the  meanest  things,  in  nature  will  give  the  truest 
lights,  where  the  greatest  sagacity  and  industry  that 
slights  such  observation  must  leave  us  in  the  dark,  or, 
what  is  worse,  amuse  and  mislead  us  by  false  lights." 

If  this  should  happen  to  be  true — and  it  certainly 
commends  itself  to  acceptance  —  it  might  portend  an 
immediate  danger  to  the  vested  interests  of  criticism, 
only  that  it  was  written  a  hundred  years  ago ;  and  we 
shall  probably  have  the  "  sagacity  and  industry  that 
slights  the  observation  "  of  nature  long  enough  yet  to 
allow  most  critics  the  time  to  learn  some  more  useful 
trade  than  criticism  as  they  pursue  it.  ISTevertheless,  I 
am  in  hopes  that  the  communistic  era  in  taste  fore- 
shadowed by  Burke  is  approaching,  and  that  it  M-ill 
occur  within  the  lives  of  men  now  overawed  by  the  fool- 
ish old  superstition  that  literature  and  art  are  anything 
but  the  expression  of  life,  and  are  to  be  judged  by  any 
other  test  than  that  of  their  fidelity  to  it.  The  time  is 
coming,  I  hope,  when  each  new  author,  each  new  artist, 
will  be  considered,  not  in  his  proportion  to  any  other 
author  or  artist,  but  in  his  relation  to  the  human  nature, 
known  to  us  all,  which  it  is  his  privilege,  his  high  duty, 
to  interpret.  "  The  true  standard  of  the  artist  is  in 
every  man's  power  "  already,  as  Burke  says ;  Michel- 
angelo's "  light  of  the  piazza,"  the  glance  of  the  com- 

196 


CKTTICISM   AND   FICTION 

mon  eye,  is  and  always  was  the  hest  light  on  a  statue; 
Goethe's  "  boys  and  blackbirds  "  have  in  all  ages  been 
the  real  connoissenrs  of  berries;  but  hitherto  the  mass 
of  common  mon  have  been  afraid  to  apply  their  own 
simplicity,  naturalness,  and  honesty  to  the  appreciation 
of  the  beautiful.  They  have  always  cast  about  for  the 
instruction  of  some  one  who  professed  to  know^  better, 
and  who  browbeat  wholesome  common-sense  into  the 
self-distrust  that  ends  in  sophistication.  They  have 
fallen  generally  to  the  worst  of  this  bad  species,  and 
have  been  "  amused  and  misled "  (how  pretty  that 
quaint  old  use  of  amuse  is!)  "by  the  false  lights"  of 
critical  vanity  and  self-righteousness.  They  have  been 
taught  to  compare  what  they  see  and  what  they  read, 
not  with  the  things  that  they  have  observed  and  kno^\^l, 
but  with  the  things  that  some  other  artist  or  writer  has 
done.  Especially  if  they  have  themselves  the  artistic 
impulse  in  any  direction  they  are  taught  to  form  them- 
selves, not  upon  life,  but  upon  the  masters  who  became 
masters  only  by  forming  themselves  upon  life.  The 
seeds  of  death  are  planted  in  them,  and  they  can  pro- 
duce only  the  still-born,  the  academic.  They  are  not 
told  to  take  their  work  into  the  public  square  and  see 
if  it  seems  true  to  the  chance  passer,  but  to  test  it  by  the 
work  of  the  very  men  who  refused  and  decried  any  other 
test  of  their  own  w^ork.  The  young  writer  wdio  attempts 
to  report  the  phrase  and  carriage  of  every-day  life,  who 
tries  to  tell  just  how  he  has  heard  men  talk  and  seen 
them  look,  is  made  to  feel  guilty  of  something  low  and 
unworthy  by  people  who  would  like  to  have  him  show 
how  Shakespeare's  men  talked  and  looked,  or  Scott's,  or 
Thackeray's,  or  Balzac's,  or  Hawthorne's,  or  Dickens's ; 
he  is  instructed  to  idealize  his  personages,  that  is,  to 
take  the  life  -  likeness  out  of  them,  and  put  the 
book-likeness   into   them.      He   is   approached   in   the 

197 


CKITICISM  AND   FICTION 

spirit  of  the  pedantry  into  wliieh  learning,  mucli  or 
little,  always  decays  when  it  withdraws  itself  and  stands 
apart  from  experience  in  an  attitude  of  imagined 
superiority,  and  which  would  say  ivith  the  same  confi- 
dence to  the  scientist :  "  I  see  that  you  arc  looking  at  a 
grasshopper  there  which  you  have  found  in  the  grass, 
and  I  suppose  you  intend  to  describe  it.  ISTow  don't 
waste  your  time  and  sin  against  culture  in  that  way. 
I've  got  a  grasshopper  here,  which  has  been  evolved  at 
considerable  pains  and  expense  out  of  the  grasshopper 
in  general;  in  fact,  it's  a  t}^e.  It's  made  up  of  wire 
and  card-board,  very  prettily  painted  in  a  conventional 
tint,  and  it's  perfectly  indestructible.  It  isn't  very 
much  like  a  real  grasshopper,  but  it's  a  great  deal  nicer, 
and  it's  served  to  represent  the  notion  of  a  grasshopper 
ever  since  man  emerged  from  barbarism.  You  may  say 
that  it's  artificial.  Well,  it  is  artificial ;  but  then  it's 
ideal  too;  and  what  you  want  to  do  is  to  cultivate  the 
ideal.  You'll  find  the  books  full  of  my  kind  of  grass- 
hopper, and  scarcely  a  trace  of  yours  in  any  of  them. 
The  thing  that  you  are  proposing  to  do  is  commonplace ; 
but  if  you  say  that  it  isn't  commonplace,  for  the  very 
reason  that  it  hasn't  been  done  before,  you'll  have  to 
admit  that  it's  photographic." 

As  I  said,  I  hope  the  time  is  coming  when  not  only 
the  artist,  but  the  common,  average  man,  who  always 
"  has  the  standard  of  the  arts  in  his  power,"  wull  have 
also  the  courage  to  apply  it,  and  will  reject  the  ideal 
grasshopper  wherever  he  finds  it,  in  science,  in  litera- 
ture, in  art,  because  it  is  not  "  simple,  natural,  and  hon- 
est," because  it  is  not  like  a  real  grasshopper.  But  I 
will  own  that  I  think  the  time  is  yet  far  off,  and  that  the 
people  who  have  been  brought  up  on  the  ideal  grass- 
hopper, the  heroic  grasshopper,  the  impassioned  grass- 
hopper, the  self-devoted,  adventureful,  good  old  roman- 

198 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

tic  card  -  board  grasshopper,  must  die  out  before  the 
simple,  honest,  and  natural  grasshopper  can  have  a  fair 
field.  I  am  in  no  haste  to  compass  the  end  of  these  good 
people,  whom  I  find  in  the  mean  time  very  amusing.  It 
is  delightful  to  meet  one  of  them,  either  in  print  or  out 
of  it — some  sweet  elderly  lady  or  excellent  gentleman 
whose  youth  was  pastured  on  the  literature  of  thirty  or 
forty  years  ago  —  and  to  witness  the  confidence  with 
which  they  preach  their  favorite  authors  as  all  the  law 
and  the  prophets.  They  have  commonly  read  little  or 
nothing  since,  or,  if  they  have,  they  have  judged  it  by  a 
standard  taken  from  these  authors,  and  never  dreamed 
of  judging  it  by  nature ;  they  are  destitute  of  the  docu- 
ments in  the  case  of  the  later  writers ;  they  suppose  that 
Balzac  was  the  beginning  of  realism,  and  that  Zola  is  its 
wicked  end ;  they  are  quite  ignorant,  but  they  are  ready 
to  talk  you  down,  if  you  differ  from  them,  with  an 
assumption  of  knowledge  sufficient  for  any  occasion. 
The  horror,  the  resentment,  with  which  they  receive  any 
question  of  their  literary  saints  is  genuine ;  you  descend 
at  once  very  far  in  the  moral  and  social  scale,  and  any- 
thing short  of  offensive  personality  is  too  good  for  you ; 
it  is  expressed  to  you  that  you  are  one  to  be  avoided,  and 
put  down  even  a  little  lower  than  you  have  naturally 
fallen. 

These  worthy  persons  are  not  to  blame ;  it  is  part  of 
their  intellectual  mission  to  represent  the  petrifaction 
of  taste,  and  to  preserve  an  image  of  a  smaller  and 
cruder  and  emptier  world  than  we  now  live  in,  a  world 
which  was  feeling  its  way  towards  the  simple,  the 
natural,  the  honest,  but  was  a  good  deal  '"  amused  and 
misled  "  by  lights  now  no  longer  mistakable  for  heaven- 
ly luminaries.  They  belong  to  a  time,  just  passing 
away,  when  certain  authors  were  considered  authorities 
in  certain  kinds,  when  they  must  be  accepted  entire 

199 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

and  not  questioned  in  any  particular.  Now  we  are  be- 
ginning to  see  and  to  say  that  no  author  is  an  authority 
except  in  those  moments  when  he  held  his  ear  close  to 
Nature's  lips  and  caught  her  very  accent.  These  mo- 
ments are  not  continuous  with  any  authors  in  the  past, 
and  they  are  rare  with  all.  Therefore  I  am  not  afraid 
to  say  now  that  the  greatest  classics  are  sometimes  not 
at  all  great,  and  that  we  can  profit  by  them  only  when 
we  hold  them,  like  our  meanest  contemporaries,  to  a 
strict  accounting,  and  verify  their  work  by  the  standard 
of  the  arts  which  we  all  have  in  our  power,  the  simple, 
the  natural,  and  the  honest. 

Those  good  people  must  always  have  a  hero,  an  idol  of 
some  sort,  and  it  is  droll  to  find  Balzac,  who  suffered 
from  their  sort  such  bitter  scorn  and  hate  for  his  realism 
while  he  was  alive,  now  become  a  fetich  in  his  turn,  to 
be  shaken  in  the  faces  of  those  who  will  not  blindly 
worship  him.  But  it  is  no  new  thing  in  the  history  of 
literature:  whatever  is  established  is  sacred  with  those 
who  do  not  think.  At  the  beginning  of  the  century, 
when  romance  was  making  the  same  fight  against  effete 
classicism  which  realism  is  making  to-day  against  effete 
romanticism,  the  Italian  poet  Monti  declared  that  "  the 
romantic  was  the  cold  grave  of  the  Beautiful,"  just  as 
the  realistic  is  now  supposed  to  be.  The  romantic  of 
tliat  day  and  the  real  of  this  are  in  certain  degree  the 
same.  Romanticism  then  sought,  as  realism  seeks  now, 
to  widen  the  bounds  of  sympathy,  to  level  every  barrier 
against  aesthetic  freedom,  to  escape  from  the  paralysis 
of  tradition.  It  exhausted  itself  in  this  impulse;  and 
it  remained  for  realism  to  assert  that  fidelity  to  ex- 
perience and  probability  of  motive  are  essential  condi- 
tions of  a  great  imaginative  literature.  It  is  not  a  new 
theory,  but  it  has  never  before  universally  characterized 
literary  endeavor.    When  realism  becomes  false  to  itself, 

200 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

when  it  heaps  up  facts  merely,  and  maps  life  instead  of 
picturing  it,  realism  will  perish  too.  Every  true  realist 
instinctively  knows  this,  and  it  is  perhaps  the  reason 
why  he  is  careful  of  every  fact,  and  feels  himself  bound 
to  express  or  to  indicate  its  meaning  at  the  risk  of  over- 
moralizing.  In  life  lie  finds  nothing  insignificant;  all 
tells  for  destiny  and  character;  nothing  that  God  has 
made  is  contemptible.  He  cannot  look  upon  human  life 
and  declare  this  thing  or  that  thing  unworthy  of  notice, 
any  more  than  the  scientist  can  declare  a  fact  of  the 
material  world  beneath  the  dignity  of  his  inquiry.  He 
feels  in  every  nerve  the  equality  of  things  and  the  unity 
of  men ;  his  soul  is  exalted,  not  by  vain  shows  and 
shadows  and  ideals,  but  by  realities,  in  which  alone  the 
truth  lives.  In  criticism  it  is  his  business  to  break  the 
images  of  false  gods  and  misshapen  heroes,  to  take  away 
the  poor  silly  toys  that  many  grown  people  would  still 
like  to  play  with.  He  cannot  keep  terms  with  "  Jack 
the  Giant-killer  "  or  "  Puss-in-Boots,"  under  any  name 
or  in  any  place,  even  when  they  reappear  as  the  convict 
Vautrec,  or  the  Marquis  de  Montrivaut,  or  the  Sworn 
Thirteen  ^N'oblemen.  He  must  say  to  himself  that 
Balzac,  when  he  imagined  these  monsters,  was  not  Bal- 
zac, he  was  Dumas;  he  was  not  realistic,  he  was  ro- 
manticistic. 


Ill 


Such  a  critic  will  not  respect  Balzac's  good  work  the 
less  for  contemning  his  bad  work.  He  will  easily  ac- 
count for  the  bad  work  historically,  and  when  he  has 
recognized  it,  will  trouble  himself  no  further  with  it. 
In  his  view  no  living  man  is  a  type,  but  a  character; 
now  noble,  now  ignoble;  now  grand,  now  little;  com- 
plex, full  of  vicissitude.    He  will  not  expect  Balzac  to 

201 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

be  always  Balzac,  and  will  be  perhaps  even  more  at- 
tracted to  the  study  of  him  when  he  was  trying  to  be 
Balzac  than  when  he  had  become  so.  In  Cesar  Blrot- 
teaUj  for  instance,  he  will  be  interested  to  note  how 
Balzac  stood  at  the  beginning  of  the  great  things  that 
have  followed  since  in  fiction.  There  is  an  interesting 
likeness  between  his  work  in  this  and  Nicolas  Gogol's 
in  Dead  Souls,  which  serves  to  illustrate  the  simultane- 
ity of  the  literary  movement  in  men  of  such  widely 
separated  civilizations  and  conditions.  Both  represent 
their  characters  with  the  touch  of  exaggeration  which 
typifies ;  but  in  bringing  his  story  to  a  close,  Balzac  em- 
ploys a  beneficence  unknown  to  the  Russian,  and  almost 
as  universal  and  as  apt  as  that  which  smiles  upon  the 
fortunes  of  the  good  in  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield.  It  is 
not  enough  to  have  rehabilitated  Birotteau  pecuniarily 
and  socially ;  he  must  make  him  die  triumphantly,  spec- 
tacularly, of  an  opportune  hemorrhage,  in  the  midst  of 
the  festivities  which  celebrate  his  restoration  to  his  old 
home.  Before  this  happens,  human  nature  has  been 
laid  under  contribution  right  and  left  for  acts  of  gener- 
osity towards  the  righteous  bankrupt ;  even  the  king 
sends  him  six  thousand  francs.  It  is  very  pretty ;  it  is 
touching,  and  brings  the  lump  into  the  reader's  throat ; 
but  it  is  too  much,  and  one  perceives  that  Balzac  lived 
too  soon  to  profit  by  Balzac.  The  later  men,  especially 
the  Russians,  have  known  how  to  forbear  the  excesses 
of  analysis,  to  withhold  the  weakly  recurring  descrip- 
tive and  caressing  epithets,  to  let  the  characters  suffice 
for  themselves.  All  this  does  not  mean  that  Cesar 
Birotteau  is  not  a  beautiful  and  pathetic  story,  full  of 
shrewdly  considered  knowledge  of  men,  and  of  a  good 
art  struggling  to  free  itself  from  self  -  consciousness. 
But  it  does  mean  that  Balzac,  when  he  wrote  it,  was 
under  the  burden  of  the  very  traditions  which  he  has 

202 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

helped  fiction  to  tlirow  off.  He  felt  obliged  to  construct 
a  mechanical  plot,  to  surcharge  his  characters,  to  moral- 
ize openly  and  baldly ;  ho  permitted  himself  to  "  sym- 
pathize "  with  certain  of  his  people,  and  to  point  out 
others  for  the  abhorrence  of  his  readers.  This  is  not  so 
bad  in  him  as  it  would  be  in  a  novelist  of  our  day.  It 
is  simply  primitive  and  inevitable,  and  he  is  not  to  be 
judged  by  it. 


IV 


In  the  beginning  of  any  art  even  the  most  gifted 
worker  must  be  crude  in  his  methods,  and  we  ought  to 
keep  this  fact  always  in  mind  when  we  turn,  say,  from 
the  purblind  w^orshippers  of  Scott  to  Scott  himself,  and 
recognize  that  he  often  wrote  a  style  cumbrous  and 
diffuse;  that  he  was  tediously  analytical  where  the 
modern  novelist  is  dramatic,  and  evolved  his  characters 
by  means  of  long-winded  explanation  and  commentary ; 
that,  except  in  the  case  of  his  lower-class  personages,  he 
made  them  talk  as  seldom  man  and  never  woman  talked ; 
that  he  was  tiresomely  descriptive ;  that  on  the  simplest 
occasions  he  went  about  half  a  mile  to  express  a  thought 
that  could  be  uttered  in  ten  paces  across  lots ;  and  that 
he  trusted  his  readers'  intuitions  so  little  that  he  was 
apt  to  rub  in  his  appeals  to  them.  He  was  probably 
right:  the  generation  which  he  wrote  for  was  duller 
than  this;  slower-witted,  aesthetically  untrained,  and  in 
maturity  not  so  apprehensive  of  an  artistic  intention  as 
the  children  of  to-day.  All  this  is  not  saying  Scott  was 
not  a  gi'eat  man ;  he  was  a  great  man,  and  a  very  great 
novelist  as  compared  with  the  novelists  who  went  before 
him.  He  can  still  amuse  young  people,  but  they  ought 
to  be  instructed  how  false  and  how  mistaken  he  often 
is,  with  his  mediaeval  ideals,  his  blind  Jacobitism,  his 

203 


CKITICISM  AND   FICTION 

intense  devotion  to  aristocracy  and  royalty ;  his  acquies- 
cence in  the  division  of  men  into  noble  and  ignoble, 
patrician  and  plebeian,  sovereign  and  subject,  as  if  it 
were  the  law  of  God ;  for  all  which,  indeed,  he  is  not  to 
blame  as  he  would  be  if  he  were  one  of  our  contem- 
poraries. Something  of  this  is  true  of  another  master, 
greater  than  Scott  in  being  less  romantic,  and  inferior 
in  being  more  German,  namely,  the  great  Goethe  him- 
self. He  taught  us,  in  novels  otherwise  now  antiquated, 
and  always  full  of  German  clumsiness,  that  it  was  false 
to  good  art — which  is  never  anything  but  the  reflection 
of  life — to  pursue  and  round  the  career  of  the  persons 
introduced,  whom  he  often  allowed  to  appear  and  dis- 
appear in  our  knowledge  as  people  in  the  actual  world 
do.  This  is  a  lesson  which  the  writers  able  to  profit  by 
it  can  never  be  too  gi'ateful  for;  and  it  is  equally  a 
benefaction  to  readers ;  but  there  is  very  little  else  in  the 
conduct  of  the  Goethean  novels  which  is  in  advance  of 
their  time;  this  remains  almost  their  sole  contribution 
to  the  science  of  fiction.  They  are  very  primitive  in 
certain  characteristics,  and  unite  with  their  calm,  deep 
insight,  an  amusing  helplessness  in  dramatization. 
''  Wilhclm  retired  to  his  room,  and  indulged  in  the  fol- 
lowing reflections,"  is  a  mode  of  analysis  which  would 
not  be  practised  nowadays;  and  all  that  fancifulness 
of  nomenclature  in  WilJielm  Mcister  is  very  drolly  senti- 
mental and  feeble.  The  adventures  ^vitll  robbers  seem 
as  if  dreamed  out  of  books  of  chivalry,  and  the  tendency 
to  allegorization  affects  one  like  an  endeavor  on  the 
author's  part  to  escape  from  the  unrealities  which  he 
must  have  felt  harassingly,  German  as  he  was.  Mixed 
up  with  the  shadows  and  illusions  are  honest,  whole- 
some, every-day  people,  who  have  the  air  of  wandering 
homelessly  about  among  them,  without  definite  direction ; 
and  the  mists  are  full  of  a  luminosity  which,  in  spite  of 

204 


CEITICISM   AND   FICTION 

them,  "we  know  for  common-sense  and-^oetry.  What  is 
useful  in  any  review  of  Goethe's  methods  is  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  fact,  which  it  must  bring,  that  the  greatest 
master  cannot  produce  a  masterpiece  in  a  new  kind. 
The  novel  was  too  recently  invented  in  Goethe's  day  not 
to  be,  even  in  his  hands,  full  of  the  faults  of  apprentice 
work. 


In  fact,  a  great  master  may  sin  against  the  "  modesty 
of  nature  "  in  many  ways,  and  I  have  felt  this  painfully 
in  reading  Balzac's  romance  —  it  is  not  worthy  the 
name  of  novel  —  Le  Pere  Goriot,  which  is  full  of  a 
malarial  restlessness,  wholly  alien  to  healthful  art. 
lAfter  that  exquisitely  careful  and  truthful  setting  of 
his  story  in  the  shabby  boarding-house,  he  fills  the  scene 
with  figures  jerked  about  by  the  exaggerated  passions 
and  motives  of  the  stage.  We  cannot  have  a  cynic 
reasonably  wicked,  disagreeable,  egoistic ;  we  must  have 
a  lurid  villain  of  melodrama,  a  disguised  convict,  with 
a  vast  criminal  organization  at  his  command,  and 

"  So  dyed  double  red  " 

in  deed  and  purpose  that  he  lights  up  the  faces  of  the 
horrified  sjoectators  with  his  glare.  A  father  fond  of 
unworthy  children,  and  leading  a  life  of  self-denial  for 
their  sake,  as  may  probably  and  pathetically  be,  is  not 
enough;  there  must  be  an  imbecile,  trembling  dotard, 
willing  to  promote  even  the  liaisons  of  his  daughters  to 
give  them  happiness  and  to  teach  the  sublimity  of  the 
paternal  instinct.  The  hero  cannot  sufficiently  be  a 
selfish  young  fellow,  with  alternating  impulses  of  greed 
and  generosity;  he  must  superfluously  intend  a  career 
of  iniquitous  splendor,  and  be  swerved  from  it  by  noth- 
14  205 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

ing  but  the  most  cataclysmal  interpositions.  It  can  he 
said  that  without  such  personages  the  plot  could  not  be 
transacted;  but  so  much  the  worse  for  tlie  plot.  Such 
a  plot  had  no  business  to  be ;  and  while  actions  so  un- 
natural are  imagined,  no  mastery  can  save  fiction  from 
contempt  with  those  who  really  think  about  it.  To  Bal- 
zac it  can  be  forgiven,  not  only  because  in  his  better 
mood  he  gave  us  such  biographies  as  Eugenie  Grandet, 
but  because  he  wrote  at  a  time  when  fiction  was  just 
beginning  to  verify  the  externals  of  life,  to  portray 
faithfully  the  outside  of  men  and  things.  It  was  still 
held  that  in  order  to  interest  the  reader  the  characters 
must  be  moved  by  the  old  romantic  ideals;  we  were  to 
be  taught  that  "  heroes  "  and  "  heroines  "  existed  all 
around  us,  and  that  these  abnormal  beings  needed  only 
to  be  discovered  in  their  several  humble  disguises,  and 
then  we  should  see  every-day  people  actuated  by  the 
fine  frenzy  of  the  creatures  of  the  poets.  How  false  that 
notion  was  few  but  the  critics,  who  are  apt  to  be  rather 
belated,  need  now  be  told.  Some  of  these  poor  fellows, 
however,  still  contend  that  it  ought  to  be  done,  and  that 
human  feelings  and  motives,  as  God  made  them  and 
as  men  know  them,  are  not  good  enough  for  novel- 
readers. 

This  is  more  explicable  than  would  appear  at  first 
glance.  The  critics — and  in  speaking  of  them  one  al- 
ways modestly  leaves  one's  self  out  of  the  count,  for 
some  reason — when  they  are  not  elders  ossified  in  tradi- 
tion, are  apt  to  be  young  people,  and  young  people  are 
necessarily  conservative  in  tlieir  tastes  and  theories. 
They  have  the  tastes  and  theories  of  their  instructors, 
who  perhaps  caught  the  truth  of  their  day,  but  whose 
routine  life  has  been  alien  to  any  other  truth.  There  is 
probably  no  cliair  of  literature  in  this  country  from 
which  the  principles  now  shaping  the  literary  expression 

206 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

of  every  civilized  people  are  not  denounced  and  con- 
founded with  certain  objectionable  French  novels,  or 
which  teaches  young  men  anything  of  the  universal  im- 
pulse which  has  given  us  the  work,  not  only  of  Zola,  but 
of  Tourguenief  and  Tolstoy  in  Russia,  of  Bjornson  and 
Ibsen  in  Norway,  of  Valdes  and  Galdos  in  Spain,  of 
Verga  in  Italy.  Till  these  younger  critics  have  learned 
to  think  as  well  as  to  write  for  themselves  they  will  per- 
sist in  heaving  a  sigh,  more  and  more  perfunctory,  for 
the  truth  as  it  was  in  Sir  Walter,  and  as  it  was  in 
Dickens  and  in  Hawthorne.  Presently  all  will  have 
been  changed;  they  will  have  seen  the  new  truth  in 
larger  and  larger  degree;  and  when  it  shall  have  be- 
come the  old  truth,  they  will  perhaps  see  it  all. 


VI 


In  the  mean  time  the  average  of  criticism  is  not 
wholly  bad  with  us.  To  be  sure,  the  critic  sometimes 
appears  in  the  panoply  of  the  savages  whom  we  have 
supplanted  on  this  continent ;  and  it  is  hard  to  believe 
that  his  use  of  the  tomahawk  and  the  scalping-knife  is 
a  form  of  conservative  surgery.  It  is  still  his  concep- 
tion of  his  office  that  he  should  assail  those  who  differ 
with  him  in  matters  of  taste  or  opinion;  that  he  must 
be  rude  ^viih  those  he  does  not  like.  It  is  too  largely 
his  superstition  that  because  he  likes  a  thing  it  is  good, 
and  because  he  dislikes  a  thing  it  is  bad ;  the  reverse  is 
quite  possibly  the  case,  but  he  is  yet  indefinitely  far 
from  knowing  that  in  affairs  of  taste  his  personal 
preference  enters  very  little.  Commonly  he  has  no 
principles,  but  only  an  assortment  of  prepossessions  for 
and  against;  and  this  otherwise  very  perfect  character 
is  sometimes  uncandid  to  the  verge  of  dishonesty.    He 

207, 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

socms  not  to  iiiiiul  misstating  the  position  of  any  one 
he  supposes  himself  to  disagree  with,  and  then  attacking 
him  for  what  he  never  said,  or  even  implied;  he  thinks 
this  is  droll,  and  appears  not  to  suspect  that  it  is  im- 
moral, lie  is  not  tolerant ;  he  thinks  it  a  virtue  to  be 
intolerant;  it  is  hard  for  him  to  understand  that  tlio 
same  thing  may  be  admirable  at  one  time  and  deplorable 
at  another ;  and  that  it  is  really  his  business  to  classify 
and  analyze  the  fruits  of  the  human  mind  very  much 
as  the  naturalist  classifies  the  objects  of  his  study, 
rather  than  to  praise  or  blame  them;  that  there  is  a 
measure  of  the  same  absurdity  in  his  trampling  on  a 
poem,  a  novel,  or  an  essay  that  does  not  please  him  as  in 
the  botanist's  grinding  a  plant  underfoot  because  he  does 
not  find  it  pretty.  He  does  not  conceive  that  it  is  his 
business  rather  to  identify  the  species  and  then  ex- 
plain how  and  where  the  specimen  is  imperfect  and 
irregular.  If  he  could  once  acquire  this  simple  idea  of 
his  duty  he  would  be  mucli  more  agreeable  company 
than  he  now  is,  and  a  more  useful  member  of  society; 
though  considering  the  hard  conditions  under  which  he 
works,  his  necessity  of  writing  hurriedly  from  an  im- 
perfect examination  of  far  more  books,  on  a  greater 
variety  of  subjects,  than  he  can  even  hope  to  read,  the 
average  American  critic  —  the  ordinary  critic  of  com- 
merce, so  to  speak — is  even  now  very  well  indeed.  Col- 
lectively he  is  more  than  this  ;  for  the  joint  effect  of  our 
criticism  is  the  pretty  thorough  appreciation  of  any 
book  submitted  to  it 


VII 


The  misfortune  rather  than  the  fault  of  our  indi- 
vidual critic  is  that  he  is  the  heir  of  the  false  theory  and 

208 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

bad  maimers  of  the  English  school.  The  theory  of  that 
school  has  apparently  been  that  almost  any  person  of 
glib  and  lively  expression  is  competent  to  write  of  al- 
most any  branch  of  polite  literature;  its  manners  are 
what  we  know.  The  American,  whom  it  has  largely 
formed,  is  by  nature  very  glib  and  very  lively,  and  com- 
monly his  criticism,  viewed  as  imaginative  work,  is 
more  agreeable  than  that  of  the  Englishman ;  but  it  is, 
like  the  art  of  both  countries,  apt  to  be  amatenrish.  In 
some  degree  our  authors  have  freed  themselves  from 
English  models;  they  have  gained  some  notion  of  the 
more  serious  work  of  the  Continent:  but  it  is  still  the 
ambition  of  the  American  critic  to  write  like  the  Eng- 
lish critic,  to  show  his  wit  if  not  his  learning,  to  strive 
to  eclipse  the  author  under  review  rather  than  illustrate 
him.  He  has  not  yet  caught  on  to  the  fact  that  it  is 
really  no  part  of  his  business  to  display  himself,  but 
that  it  is  altogether  his  duty  to  place  a  book  in  sucb  a 
light  that  the  reader  shall  know  its  class,  its  function, 
its  character.  The  vast  good-nature  of  our  people  pre- 
serves us  from  the  worst  effects  of  this  criticism  without 
principles.  Our  critic,  at  his  lowest,  is  rarely  malig- 
nant; and  when  he  is  rude  or  untruthful,  it  is  mostly 
without  truculence ;  I  suspect  that  he  is  often  offensive 
without  knowing  that  he  is  so.  ISTow  and  then  he  acts 
simply  under  instruction  from  higher  authority,  and 
denounces  because  it  is  the  tradition  of  his  publication 
to  do  so.  In  other  cases  the  critic  is  obliged  to  support 
his  journal's  repute  for  severity,  or  for  wit,  or  for 
morality,  though  he  may  himself  be  entirely  amiable, 
dull,  and  wicked ;  this  necessity  more  or  less  warps  his 
verdicts. 

The  worst  is  that  he  is  personal,  perhaps  because  it  is 
so  easy  and  so  natural  to  be  personal,  and  so  instantly 
attractive.     In  this  respect  our  criticism  Has  not  im- 

200 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

proved  from  the  accession  of  numbers  of  ladies  to  its 
ranks,  though  we  still  hope  so  much  from  women  in  our 
politics  when  they  shall  come  to  vote.  They  have  come 
to  write,  and  with  the  effect  to  increase  the  amount  of 
little-digging,  which  rather  superabounded  in  our  liter- 
ary criticism  before.  They  "  know  what  they  like  " — 
that  pernicious  maxim  of  those  who  do  not  know  what 
they  ought  to  like — and  they  pass  readily  from  censur- 
ing an  author's  performance  to  censuring  him.  They 
bring  a  stock  of  lively  misapprehensions  and  prejudices 
to  their  work ;  they  would  rather  have  heard  about  than 
known  about  a  book ;  and  they  take  kindly  to  the  public 
wish  to  be  amused  ratlier  than  edified.  But  neither 
have  they  so  much  harm  in  them:  they,  too,  are  more 
ignorant  than  malevolent. 

'^     ./ .  VIII 

Our  criticism  is  disabled  by  the  unwillingness  of  the 
critic  to  learn  from  an  author,  and  his  readiness  to  mis- 
trust him.  A  writer  passes  his  whole  life  in  fitting  him- 
self for  a  certain  kind  of  performance;  the  critic  does 
not  ask  why,  or  whether  the  performance  is  good  or  bad, 
but  if  he  does  net  like  the  kind,  he  instructs  the  writer 
to  go  off  and  do  some  other  sort  of  thing — usually  the 
sort  that  has  been  done  already,  and  done  sufficiently. 
If  he  could  once  understand  that  a  man  who  has  written 
the  book  he  dislikes,  probably  knows  infinitely  more 
about  its  kind  and  his  own  fitness  for  doing  it  than  any 
one  else,  the  critic  might  learn  something,  and  might 
help  the  reader  to  learn ;  but  by  putting  himself  in  a 
false  position,  a  position  of  superiority,  he  is  of  no  use. 
He  is  not  to  suppose  that  an  author  has  committed  an 
offence  against  him  by  writing  the  kind  of  book  he  does 

210 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

not  like;  lie  will  be  far  more  profitably  employed  on 
behalf  of  the  reader  in  finding  out  whether  they  had 
better  not  both  like  it.  Let  him  conceive  of  an  author 
as  not  in  any  wise  on  trial  before  him,  but  as  a  reflection 
of  this  or  that  aspect  of  life,  and  he  will  not  be  tempted 
to  browbeat  him  or  bully  him. 

The  critic  need  not  be  impolite  even  to  the  youngest 
and  weakest  author.  A  little  courtesy,  or  a  good  deal, 
a  constant  perception  of  the  fact  that  a  book  is  not  a 
misdemeanor,  a  decent  self-respect  that  must  forbid  the 
civilized  man  the  savage  pleasure  of  wounding,  are 
what  I  would  ask  for  our  criticism,  as  something  which 
will  add  sensibly  to  its  present  lustre. 


IX 


I  WOULD  have  my  fellow-critics  consider  what  they 
are  really  in  the  world  for.  The  critic  must  perceive,  if 
he  will  question  himself  more  carefully,  that  his  office 
is  mainly  to  ascertain  facts  and  traits  of  literature,  not 
to  invent  or  denounce  them;  to  discover  principles,^ not 
to  establish  them ;  to  report,  not  to  create. 

It  is  so  much  easier  to  say  that  you  like  this  or  dis- 
like that,  than  to  tell  why  one  thing  is,  or  where  another 
thing  comes  from,  that  many  flourishing  critics  will 
have  to  go  out  of  business  altogether  if  the  scientific 
method  comes  in,  for  then  the  critic  will  have  to  know 
something  besides  his  own  mind.  He  will  have  to  know 
something  of  the  laws  of  that  mind,  and  of  its  generic 
history. 

The  history  of  all  literature  shows  that  even  with  the 
youngest  and  weakest  author  criticism  is  quite  powerless 
against  his  will  to  do  his  own  work  in  his  ow^n  way; 
and  if  this  is  the  case  in  the  green  wood,  how  much  more 

211 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

in  tlic  dry!  It  has  been  thought  by  the  scntiiiientalist 
that  criticism,  if  it  cannot  cure,  can  at  least  kill,  and 
Keats  was  long  alleged  in  proof  of  its  efficacy  in  this 
sort.  But  criticism  neither  cured  nor  killed  Keats,  as 
we  all  now  very  well  know.  It  Avounded,  it  cruelly  hurt 
him,  no  doubt;  and  it  is  always  in  the  power  of  the 
critic  to  give  pain  to  the  author — the  meanest  critic  to 
tlie  greatest  author — for  no  one  can  help  feeling  a  rude- 
ness. But  every  literary  movement  has  been  violently'^ 
opposed  at  the  start,  and  yet  never  stayed  in  the  least, 
or  arrested,  by  criticism;  every  author  has  been  con- 
demned for  his  virtues,  but  in  no  wise  changed  by  it. 
In  the  beginning  he  reads  the  critics;  but  presently  per- 
ceiving that  he  alone  makes  or  mars  himself,  and  that 
they  have  no  instruction  for  him,  he  mostly  leaves  off 
reading  them,  though  he  is  alwaj^s  glad  of  their  kind- 
ness or  grieved  by  their  harshness  when  he  chances  upon 
it.  This,  I  believe,  is  the  general  experience,  modified, 
of  course,  by  exceptions. 

Then,  are  we  critics  of  no  use  in  the  world  ?  I  should 
not  like  to  think  that,  though  I  am  not  quite  ready  to 
define  our  use.  More  than  one  sober  thinker  is  in- 
clining at  present  to  suspect  that  aesthetically  or  specifi- 
cally we  are  of  no  use,  and  that  we  are  only  useful  liis- 
torically ;  that  we  may  register  laws,  but  not  enact  them. 
I  am  not  quite  prepared  to  admit  that  aesthetic  criticism 
is  useless,  though  in  view  of  its  futility  in  any  given 
instance  it  is  liard  to  deny  that  it  is  so.  It  certainly 
seems  as  useless  against  a  book  that  strikes  the  popular 
fancy,  and  prospers  on  in  spite  of  condemnation  by  the 
best  critics,  as  it  is  against  a  book  which  does  not 
generally  please,  and  which  no  critical  favor  can  make 
acceptable.  This  is  so  common  a  phenomenon  that  I 
wonder  it  has  never  hitherto  suggested  to  criticism  that 
its  point  of  view  was  altogether  mistaken,  and  that  it 

212 


CKTTICISM   AND   FICTION 

Avas  really  necessary  to  judge  books  uot  as  dead  things, 
but  as  living  things — things  which  have  an  influence  and 
a  power  irrespective  of  beauty  and  wisdom,  and  merely 
as  expressions  of  actuality  in  thought  and  feeling.  Per- 
haps criticism  has  a  cumulative  and  final  effect ;  perhaps 
it  does  some  good  we  do  not  know  of.  It  apparently 
does  not  affect  the  author  directly,  but  it  may  reach  him 
througli  the  reader.  It  may  in  some  cases  enlarge  or 
diminish  his  audience  for  a  while,  until  he  has  thor- 
oughly measured  and  tested  his  own  powers.  If  criti- 
cism is  to  affect  literature  at  all,  it  must  be  through  the 
writers  who  have  newly  left  the  starting-point,  and  are 
reasonably  uncertain  of  the  race,  not  with  those  wdio 
have  won  it  again  and  again  in  their  own  way. 


X 


Sometimes  it  has  seemed  to  me  that  the  crudest  ex- 
pression of  any  creative  art  is  better  than  the  finest 
comment  upon  it.  I  have  sometimes  suspected  that 
more  thinking,  more  feeling  certainly,  goes  to  the  crea- 
tion of  a  poor  novel  than  to  the  production  of  a  brilliant 
criticism ;  and  if  any  novel  of  our  time  fails  to  live  a 
hundred  years,  will  any  censure  of  it  live?  Wlio  can 
endure  to  read  old  reviews  ?  One  can  hardly  read  them 
if  they  are  in  praise  of  one's  own  books. 

The  author  neglected  or  overlooked  need  not  despair 
for  that  reason,  if  he  will  reflect  that  criticism  can 
neither  make  nor  unmake  authors ;  that  there  have  not 
been  greater  books  since  criticism  became  an  art  than 
there  were  before ;  that  in  fact  the  greatest  books  seem 
to  have  come  much  earlier. 

That  which  criticism  seems  most  certainly  to  have 
done  is  to  have  put  a  literary  consciousness  into  books 

213 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

iinfelt  ill  the  early  masterpieces,  but  imfelt  now  only  in 
the  books  of  men  whose  lives  have  been  passed  in 
activities,  who  have  been  nsed  to  employing  language 
as  they  would  have  employed  any  implement,  to  effect 
an  object,  who  have  regarded  a  thing  to  be  said  as  in  no 
wise  different  from  a  thing  to  be  done.  In  this  sort  I 
have  seen  no  modern  book  so  unconscious  as  General 
Grant's  Personal  Memoirs.  The  author's  one  end  and 
aim  is  to  get  the  facts  out  in  words.  He  does  not  cast 
about  for  phrases,  but  takes  the  word,  whatever  it  is, 
that  will  best  give  his  meaning,  as  if  it  were  a  man  or  a 
force  of  men  for  the  accomplishment  of  a  feat  of  arms. 
There  is  not  a  moment  wasted  in  preening  and  pretti- 
fying, after  the  fashion  of  literary  men;  there  is  no 
thought  of  style,  and  so  the  style  is  good  as  it  is  in  the 
Book  of  Chronicles,  as  it  is  in  the  Pilgrims  Progress, 
with  a  peculiar,  almost  plebeian,  plainness  at  times. 
There  is  no  more  attempt  at  dramatic  effect  than  there 
is  at  ceremonious  pose ;  things  happen  in  that  tale  of  a 
mighty  war  as  they  happened  in  the  mighty  war  itself, 
without  setting,  without  artificial  reliefs  one  after  an- 
other, as  if  they  were  all  of  one  quality  and  degree. 
Judgments  are  delivered  with  the  same  unimposing 
quiet ;  no  awe  surrounds  the  tribunal  except  that  which 
comes  from  the  weight  and  justice  of  the  opinions;  it 
is  always  an  unaffected,  unpretentious  man  who  is  talk- 
ing; and  throughout  he  prefers  to  wear  the  uniform  of 
a  private,  with  nothing  of  the  general  about  him  but  the 
shoulder-straps,  which  he  sometimes  forgets. 


XI 


'^  Oanox  Farrar's  opinions  of  literary  criticism  are 
very  much  to  my  liking,  perhaps  because  when  I  read 

214 


CEITICISM  AND   FICTION 

them  I  found  them  so  like  my  own,  already  delivered 
in  print.  He  tells  the  critics  that  "  they  are  in  no  sense 
the  legislators  of  literature,  barely  even  its  judges  and 
police  " ;  and  he  reminds  them  of  Mr.  Ruskin's  saying 
that  "  a  bad  critic  is  probably  the  most  mischievous 
person  in  the  world,"  though  a  sense  of  their  relative 
proportion  to  the  whole  of  life  would  perhaps  acquit  the 
worst  among  them  of  this  extreme  of  culpability.  A 
bad  critic  is  as  bad  a  thing  as  can  be,  but,  after  all,  his 
mischief  does  not  carry  very  far.  Otherwise  it  would 
be  mainly  the  conventional  books  and  not  the  originak 
books  which  w^ould  survive ;  for  the  censor  who  imag- 
ines himself  a  law-giver  can  give  law  only  to  the  imita- 
tive and  never  to  the  creative  mind.  Criticism  has  con- 
demned whatever  was,  from  time  to  time,  fresh  and 
vital  in  literature;  it  has  always  fought  the  new  good 
thing  in  behalf  of  the  old  good  thing ;  it  has  invariably 
fostered  and  encouraged  the  tame,  the  trite,  the  nega- 
tive. Yet  upon  the  whole  it  is  the  native,  the  novel, 
the  positive  that  has  survived  in  literature.  ^Vhereas, 
if  bad  criticism  were  the  most  mischievous  thing  in  the 
world,  in  the  full  implication  of  the  words,  it  must  have 
been  the  tame,  the  trite,  the  negative,  that  survived. 

Bad  criticism  is  mischievous  enough,  however ;  and  I 
think  that  much  if  not  most  current  criticism  as  prac- 
tised among  the  English  and  Americans  is  bad,  is  falsely 
principled,  and  is  conditioned  in  evil.  It  is  falsely 
principled  because  it  is  unprincipled,  or  wdthout  prin- 
ciples ;  and  it  is  conditioned  in  evil  because  it  is  almost 
wholly  anonymous.  At  the  best  its  opinions  are  not  con- 
clusions from  cectain  easily  verifiable  principles,  but  are 
effects  from  the  worship  of  certain  models.  They  are  in 
so  far  quite  worthless,  for  it  is  the  very  nature  of  things 
that  the  original  mind  cannot  conform  to  models;  it 
has  its  norm  wdthin  itself ;  it  can  work  only  in  its  own 

215 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

■vvaj,  and  by  its  self-given  laws.  Criticism  does  not  in- 
quire whether  a  work  is  trueJto  life,  bnt  tacitly  or  ex- 
plicitly compares  it  with  models,  and  tests  it  by  them. 
If  literary  art  travelled  by  any  sncli  road  as  criticism 
would  have  it  go,  it  would  travel  in  a  vicious  circle,  and 
would  arrive  only  at  the  point  of  departure.  Yet  this 
is  the  course  that  criticism  must  always  prescribe  when 
it  attempts  to  give  laws.  Being  itself  artificial,  it  can- 
not conceive  of  the  original  except  as  the  abnormal. 
It  nuist  altogether  reconceive  its  office  before  it  can  be  of 
use  to  literature.  It  must  reduce  this  to  the  business  of 
observing,  recording,  and  comparing;  to  analyzing  the 
material  before  it,  and  then  sjnthetizing  its  impressions. 
Even  then,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  literature  as 
an  art  could  get  on  perfectly  wtII  without  it.  Just  as 
many  good  novels,  poems,  plays,  essays,  sketches,  would 
be  written  if  there  were  no  such  thing  as  criticism  in 
the  literary  world,  and  no  more  bad  ones. 

But  it  will  be  long  before  criticism  ceases  to  imagine 
itself  a  controlling  force,  to  give  itself  airs  of  sover- 
eignty, and  to  issue  decrees.  As  it  exists  it  is  mostly  a 
mischief,  though  not  the  greatest  mischief;  but  it  may 
be  greatly  ameliorated  in  character  and  softened  in 
manner  bj  the  total  abolition  of  anouMiiity. 

I  think  it  would  be  safe  to  say  that  in  no  other  rela- 
tion of  life  is  so  much  brutality  permitted  by  civilized 
society  as  in  the  criticism  of  literature  and  the  arts. 
Canon  Farrar  is  quite  right  in  reproaching  literary 
criticism  with  the  uncandor  of  judging  an  author  with- 
out reference  to  his  aims;  wnth  pursuing  certain  writers 
from  spite  and  prejudice,  and  mere  habit;  with  mis- 
representing a  book  by  quoting  a  phrase  or  passage  apart 
from  the  context ;  with  magnifying  misprints  and  care- 
less expressions  into  important  faults ;  with  abusing  an 
author  for  his  opinions ;  with  base  and  personal  motives. 

210 


CKITTCTSM   AND   FICTION 

Every  wvitor  of  experience  knows  that  certain  critical 
journals  will  condemn  his  work  without  regard  to  its 
quality,  oven  if  it  has  never  beon  his  fortune  to  learn,  as 
one  author  did  from  a  repcntent  reviewer,  that  in  a 
journal  pretending  to  literary  taste  his  books  were  given 
ont  for  review  with  the  caution,  "  Remember  that  the 
Clarion  is  opposed  to  Mr.  Blank's  books," 

The  final  conclusion  appears  to  be  that  the  man,  or 
even  the  young  lady,  who  is  given  a  gun,  and  told  to 
shoot  at  some  passer  from  behind  a  hedge,  is  placed 
in  circumstances  of  temptation,  almost  too  strong  for 
human  nature. 

XII 

As  I  have  already  intimated,  I  doubt  the  more  lasting 
effects  of  unjust  criticism.  It  is  no  part  of  my  belief 
that  Keats's  fame  was  long  delayed  by  it,  or  Words- 
worth's, or  Browning's.  Something  unwonted,  unex- 
pected, in  the  quality  of  each  delayed  his  recognition; 
each  was  not  only  a  poet,  he  was  a  revolution,  a  new 
order  of  things,  to  which  the  critical  perceptions  and 
habitudes  had  painfully  to  adjust  themselves.  But  I 
have  no  question  of  the  gross  and  stupid  injustice  with 
which  these  great  men  were  used,  and  of  the  barbariza- 
tion  of  the  public  mind  by  the  sight  of  the  wrong  in- 
flicted on  them  with  impunity.  This  savage  condition 
still  persists  in  the  toleration  of  anonymous  criticism, 
an  abuse  that  ought  to  be  as  extinct  as  the  torture  of 
witnesses.  It  is  hard  enough  to  treat  a  fellow-author 
with  I'espect  even  when  one  has  to  address  him,  name  to 
name,  upon  the  same  level,  in  plain  day;  swooping 
down  upon  him  in  the  dark,  panoplied  in  the  authority 
of  a  great  journal,  it  is  impossible. 

Every  now  and  then  some  idealist  comes  forward  and 
217 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

declares  that  you  should  say  nothing  in  criticism  of  a 
man's  book  which  yovi  Avonld  not  say  of  it  to  his  face. 
But  I  am  afraid  this  is  asking  too  much.  I  am  afraid 
it  would  put  an  end  to  all  criticism ;  and  that  if  it  were 
practised  literature  would  he  left  to  purify  itself.  I 
have  no  douht  literature  would  do  this;  but  in  such  a 
state  of  things  there  would  be  no  provision  for  the 
critics.  We  ought  not  to  destroy  critics,  we  ought  to 
reform  them,  or  rather  transform  them,  or  turn  them 
from  the  assumption  of  authority  to  a  realization  of 
their  true  function  in  the  civilized  state.  They  are  no 
worse  at  heart,  probably,  than  many  others,  and  there 
are  probably  good  husbands  and  tender  fathers,  loving 
daughters  and  careful  mothers,  among  them. 

It  is  evident  to  any  student  of  human  nature  that  the 
critic  who  is  obliged  to  sign  his  review  will  be  more 
careful  of  an  author's  feelings  than  he  would  if  he  could 
intangibly  and  invisibly  deal  with  him  as  the  representa- 
tive of  a  great  journal.  He  will  be  loath  to  have  his 
name  connected  with  those  perversions  and  misstate- 
ments of  an  author's  meaning  in  which  the  critic  now 
indulges  without  danger  of  being  turned  out  of  honest 
company.  He  will  be  in  some  degree  forced  to  be  fair 
and  just  with  a  book  he  dislikes;  he  will  not  wish  to 
misrepresent  it  when  his  sin  can  be  traced  directly  to 
him  in  person ;  he  will  not  be  willing  to  voice  the  preju- 
dice of  a  journal  which  is  "  opposed  to  the  books  "  of 
this  or  that  author;  and  the  journal  itself,  when  it  is 
no  longer  rcsj)onsible  for  the  behavior  of  its  critic,  may 
find  it  interesting  and  profitable  to  give  to  an  author 
his  innings  when  he  feels  wronged  by  a  reviewer  and 
desires  to  right  himself;  it  may  even  be  eager  to  offer 
him  the  opportunity.  We  shall  then,  perhaps,  fre- 
quently witness  the  spectacle  of  authors  turning  upon 
their    reviewers,    and    imjjroving    their    manners    and 

218 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

morals  by  confronting  them  in  public  with  the  errors 
they  may  now  commit  with  impunity.  Many  an  author 
smarts  under  injuries  and  indignities  which  he  might 
resent  to  the  advantage  of  literature  and  civilization, 
if  he  were  not  afraid  of  being  browbeaten  by  the  jour- 
nal whose  nameless  critic  has  outraged  him. 

The  public  is  now  of  opinion  that  it  involves  loss  of 
dignity  to  creative  talent  to  try  to  right  itself  if 
wronged,  but  here  we  are  without  the  requisite  statistics. 
Creative  talent  may  come  off  with  all  the  dignity  it 
went  in  with,  and  it  may  accomplish  a  very  good  work 
in  demolishing  criticism. 

In  any  other  relation  of  life  the  man  who  thinks  him- 
self wronged  tries  to  right  himself,  violently,  if  he  is  a 
mistaken  man,  and  lawfully  if  he  is  a  wise  man  or  a 
rich  one,  which  is  practically  the  same  thing.  But  the 
author,  dramatist,  painter,  sculptor,  whose  book,  play, 
picture,  statue,  has  been  unfairly  dealt  with,  as  he  be- 
lieves, must  make  no  effort  to  right  himself  with  the 
public;  he  must  bear  his  wrong  in  silence;  he  is  even 
expected  to  gi'in  and  bear  it,  as  if  it  were  funny.  Every- 
body understands  that  it  is  not  funny  to  him,  not  in  the 
least  funny,  but  everybody  says  that  he  cannot  make  an 
effort  to  get  the  public  to  take  his  point  of  view  without 
loss  of  dignity.  This  is  very  odd,  but  it  is  the  fact,  and 
I  suppose  that  it  comes  from  the  feeling  that  the  author, 
dramatist,  painter,  sculptor,  has  already  said  the  best 
he  can  for  his  side  in  his  book,  play,  picture,  statue. 
This  is  partly  true,  and  yet  if  he  wishes  to  add  some- 
thing more  to  prove  the  critic  wrong,  I  do  not  see  how 
his  attempt  to  do  so  should  involve  loss  of  dignity. 
The  public,  which  is  so  jealous  for  his  dignity,  does  not 
otherwise  use  him  as  if  he  were  a  very  great  and  in- 
valuable creature ;  if  he  fails,  it  lets  him  starve  like  any 
one  else.    I  should  say  that  he  lost  dignity  or  not  as  he 

219 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

behaved,  in  his  effort  to  right  himself,  with  petulance 
or  with  principle.  If  he  betrayed  a  wounded  vanity,  if 
he  impugned  the  motives  and  accused  the  lives  of  his 
critics,  I  should  certainly  feel  that  he  was  losing  dig- 
nity ;  but  if  he  temperately  examined  their  theories,  and 
tried  to  shov/  where  they  were  mistaken,  I  think  he 
would  not  only  gain  dignity,  but  would  perform  a  very 
useful  Avork. 

XIII 

I  WOULD  beseech  the  literary  critics  of  our  country  to 
disabuse  themselves  of  the  mischievous  notion  that  they 
are  essential  to  the  progress  of  literature  in  the  way 
critics  have  imagined.  Canon  Farrar  confesses  that 
with  the  best  will  in  the  world  to  profit  by  the  many 
criticisms  of  his  books,  he  has  never  profited  in  the  least 
by  any  of  them ;  and  this  is  almost  the  universal  experi- 
ence of  authors.  It  is  not  always  the  fault  of  the  critics. 
They  sometimes  deal  honestly  and  fairly  by  a  book,  and 
not  so  often  they  deal  adequately.  But  in  making  a 
book,  if  it  is  at  all  a  good  book,  the  author  has  learned 
all  that  is  knowable  about  it,  and  every  strong  point  and 
every  weak  point  in  it,  far  more  accurately  than  any  one 
else  can  possibly  learn  them.  He  has  learned  to  do 
better  than  well  for  the  future ;  but  if  his  book  is  bad, 
he  cannot  be  taught  anything  about  it  from  the  out- 
side. It  will  perish;  and  if  he  has  not  the  root  of 
literature  in  him,  he  will  perish  as  an  author  with  it. 

But  what  is  it  that  gives  tendency  in  art,  then? 
What  is  it  makes  people  like  this  at  one  time,  and  that 
at  another  ?  Above  all,  what  makes  a  better  fashion 
change  for  a  worse;  how  can  the  ugly  come  to  be  pre- 
ferred to  the  beautiful ;  in  other  words,  how  can  an  art 
decay  ? 

220 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

This  question  came  up  in  my  mind  lately  with  regard 
to  English  fiction  and  its  form,  or  rather  its  formless- 
ness. How,  for  instance,  conld  people  who  had  once 
known  the  simple  verity,  the  refined  perfection  of  Miss 
Anstcn,  enjoy  anything  less  refined  and  less  perfect? 

Witli  her  example  before  them,  why  should  not  Eng- 
lish novelists  have  gone  on  writing  simply,  honestly, 
artistically,  ever  after  ?  One  would  tliink  it  must  have 
Leen  impossible  for  them  to  do  otherwise,  if  one  did 
not  remember,  say,  the  lamentable  behavior  of  the  actors 
who  support  Mr.  *Jefferson,  and  their  theatricality  in 
the  very  presence  of  his  beautiful  naturalness.  It  is 
very  difiicult,  that  simplicity,  and  nothing  is  so  hard 
as  to  be  honest,  as  the  reader,  if  he  has  ever  happened 
to  try  it,  must  know.  "  The  big  bow-wow  I  can  do  my- 
self, like  any  one  going,"  said  Scott,  but  he  owned  that 
the  exquisite  touch  of  Miss  Austen  was  denied  him ; 
and  it  seems  certainly  to  have  been  denied  in  greater 
or  less  measure  to  all  her  successors.  But  though  read- 
ing and  writing  come  by  nature,  as  Dogberry  justly 
said,  a  taste  in  them  may  be  cultivated,  or  once  culti- 
vated, it  may  be  preserved ;  and  why  was  it  not  so  among 
those  poor  islanders  ?  One  does  not  ask  such  things  in 
order  to  be  at  the  pains  of  answering  them  one's  self, 
but  with  the  hope  that  some  one  else  will  take  the 
trouble  to  do  so,  and  I  propose  to  be  rather  a  silent 
partnpr  in  the  enterprise,  which  I  shall  leave  mainly 
to  Senor  Armando  Palacio  Valdes.  This  delightful 
author  will,  however,  only  be  able  to  answer  my  ques- 
tion indirectly  from  the  essay  on  fiction  with  which  he 
prefaces  one  of  his  novels,  the  charming  story  of  The 
Sister  of  San  Sulpizio,  and  I  shall  have  some  little 
labor  in  fitting  his  saws  to  my  instances.  It  is  an  essay 
which  I  wish  every  one  intending  to  read,  or  even  to 
write,  a  novel,  might  acquaint  himself  with ;  for  it  con- 
is  221 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

tains  some  of  the  best  and  clearest  tilings  which  have 
been  said  of  the  art  of  fiction  in  a  time  when  nearly 
all  who  practise  it  have  turned  to  talk  about  it. 

Sefior  Valdes  is  a  realist,  but  a  realist  according  to 
his  own  conception  of  realism;  and  he  has  some  words 
of  just  censure  for  the  French  naturalists,  whom  he 
finds  unnecessarily,  and  suspects  of  being  sometimes 
even  mercenarily,  nasty.  He  sees  the  wide  difference 
tliat  passes  between  this  naturalism  and  the  realism  of 
the  English  and  Spanish;  and  he  goes  somewhat  further 
than  I  should  go  in  condemning  it.  "  The  French 
naturalism  represents  only  a  moment,  and  an  insignifi- 
cant part  of  life.  ...  It  is  characterized  by  sadness 
and  narrowness.  The  prototype  of  this  literature  is 
sL  the  Madame  Bovary  of  Flaubert.  I  am  an  admirer  of 
'^  this  novelist,  and  especially  of  this  novel ;  but  often  in 
thinkino;  of  it  I  have  said,  How  dreary  would  literature 
be  if  it  were  no  more  than  this!  Tliere  is  something 
antipathetic  and  gloomy  and  limited  in  it,  as  there  is  in 
modern  French  life;"  but  this  seems  to  me  exactly  the 
best  possible  reason  for  its  being.  I  believe  with  Seiior 
Valdes  that  "  no  literature  can  live  long  without  joy," 
not  because  of  its  mistaken  aesthetics,  however,  but  be- 
cause no  civilization  can  live  long  without  joy.  The  ex- 
pression of  French  life  will  change  when  French  life 
changes;  and  French  naturalism  is  better  at  its  worst 
than  French  unnaturalism  at  its  best.  "  ISTo  one,"  as 
Senor  Valdes  truly  says,  "  can  rise  from  the  perusal  of 
a  naturalistic  book  .  .  .  without  a  vivid  desire  to 
escape  "  from  the  wretched  world  de]ucted  in  it,  "  and 
a  purpose,  more  or  less  vague,  of  helping  to  better  the 
lot  and  morally  elevate  the  abject  beings  who  figure  in 
it.  ISTaturalistic  art,  then,  is  not  immoral  in  itself,  for 
then  it  would  not  merit  the  name  of  art ;  for  though  it 
I  is  not  the  business  of  art  to  preach  morality,  still  I  think 
i  222 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

that,  resting  on  a  divine  and  spiritual  principle,  like  the 
idea  of  the  beautiful,  it  is  perforce  moral.  I  hold  much 
more  immoral  other  books  which,  under  a  glamour  of 
something  spiritual  and  beautiful  and  sublime,  portray 
the  vices  in  which  we  are  allied  to  the  beasts.  Such, 
for  example,  are  the  works  of  Octave  Feuillet,  Arsene 
Iloussaye,  Georges  Ohnet,  and  other  contemporary  novel- 
ists much  in  vogue  among  the  higher  classes  of  society." 
But  what  is  this  idea  of  the  beautiful  which  art  rests 
upon,  and  so  becomes  moral  ?  "  The  man  of  our  time," 
says  Senor  Valdes,  "  wishes  to  know  everything  and 
enjoy  everything:  he  turns  the  objective  of  a  powerful 
equatorial  towards  the  heavenly  spaces  where  gravitates 
the  infinitude  of  the  stars,  just  as  he  applies  the  micro- 
scope to  the  infinitude  of  the  smallest  insects ;  for  their 
laws  are  identical.  His  experience,  united  with  intui- 
tion, has  convinced  him  that  in  nature  there  is  neither 
great  nor  small ;  all  is  equal.  All  is  equally  grand,  all 
is  equally  just,  all  is  equally  beautiful,  because  all  is 
equally  divine."  But  beauty,  Senor  Valdes  explains, 
e^iists  in  the  human  spirit,  and  is  the  beautiful  effect 
which  it  receives  from  the  true  meaning  of  things;  it 
does  not  matter  what  the  things  are,  and  it  is  the  func- 
tion of  the  artist  who  feels  this  effect  to  impart  it  to 
others.  I  may  add  that  there  is  no  joy  in  art  except 
this  perception  of  the  meaning  of  things  and  its  com- 
munication ;  when  you  have  felt  it,  and  portrayed  it  in 
a  poem,  a  symphony,  a  novel,  a  statue,  a  picture,  an 
edifice,  you  have  fulfilled  the  purpose  for  which  you 
were  born  an  artist. 

•  The  reflection  of  exterior  nature  in  the  individual 
spirit,  Senor  Valdes  believes  to  be  the  fundamental  of 
art.  "  To  say,  then,  that  the  artist  must  not  copy  but 
create  is  nonsense,  because  he  can  in  no  wise  copy,  and 
in  no  wise  create.    He  who  sets  deliberately  about  modi- 

223 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

fyiug  nature,  shows  that  he  has  not  felt  her  beauty,  and 
therefore  cannot  make  others  feel  it.  The  puerile  desire 
Avhicli  some  artists  without  genius  manifest  to  go  about 
selecting  in  nature,  not  what  seems  to  them  beautiful, 
but  what  they  think  will  seem  beautiful  to  others,  and 
rejecting  what  may  displease  them,  ordinarily  produces 
cold  and  insipid  works.  For,  instead  of  exploring  the 
illimitable  fields  of  reality,  they  cling  to  the  forms  in- 
vented by  other  artists  who  have  succeeded,  and  they 
make  statues  of  statues,  poems  of  poems,  novels  of 
novels.  It  is  entirely  false  that  the  great  romantic, 
symbolic,  or  classic  poets  modified  nature ;  such  as  they 
liave  expressed  her  they  felt  her;  and  in  this  view  they 
are  as  much  realists  as  ourselves.  In  like  manner  if  in 
the  realistic  tide  that  now  bears  us  on  there  are  some 
spirits  wdio  feel  nature  in  another  way,  in  the  romantic 
way,  or  the  classic  way,  they  would  not  falsify  her  in 
expressing  her  so.  Only  those  falsify  her  who,  without 
feeling  classic  avise  or  romantic-wise,  set  about  being 
classic  or  romantic,  wearisomely  reproducing  the  models 
of  former  ages ;  and  equally  those  who,  without  sharing 
the  sentiment  of  realism,  which  now  prevails,  force 
themselves  to  be  realists  merely  to  follow  the  fashion." 

The  pseudo-realists,  in  fact,  are  the  worse  offenders, 
to  my  thinking,  for  tliey  sin  against  the  living;  whereas 
those  who  continue  to  celebrate  the  heroic  adventures  of 
"  Puss-in-Boots  "  and  the  hair-breadth  escapes  of  "  Tom 
Thumb,"  under  various  aliases,  only  cast  disrespect 
upon^he  immortals  who  have  passed  beyond  these  noises. 


XIV 

"  The  principal  cause,"  our  Spaniard  says,  "  of  the 
decadence  of  contemporary  literature  is  found,  to  my 

224 


CKITICISM   AND   FICTION 

thinking,  in  the  vice  which  has  been  very  graphically 
called  effcetism,  or  the  itch  of  awaking  at  all  cost  in 
the  reader  vivid  and  violent  emotions,  which  shall  do 
credit  to  the  invention  and  originality  of  the  writer. 
This  vice  has  its  roots  in  human  nature  itself,  and  more 
particularly  in  that  of  the  artist;  he  has  always  some- 
thing feminine  in  him,  which  tempts  him  to  coquet 
with  the  reader,  and  display  qualities  that  he  thinks 
will  astonish  him,  as  women  laugh  for  no  reason,  to 
show  their  teeth  when  they  have  them  white  and  small 
and  even,  or  lift  their  dresses  to  show  their  feet  when 
there  is  no  mud  in  the  street.  .  .  .  What  many  writers 
nowadays  wish,  is  to  produce  an  effect,  grand  and  imme- 
diate, to  play  the  part  of  geniuses.  For  this  they  have 
learned  that  it  is  only  necessary  to  write  exaggerated 
works  in  any  sort,  since  the  vulgar  do  not  ask  that  they ' 
shall  be  quietly  made  to  think  and  feel,  but  that  they 
shall  be  startled ;  and  among  the  vulgar,  of  course,  I  in- 
clude the  great  part  of  those  who  write  literary  criticism, 
and  who  constitute  the  worst  vulgar,  since  they  teach 
what  they  do  not  know,  .  .  .  There  are  many  persons 
who  suppose  that  the  highest  proof  an  artist  can  give 
of  his  fantasy  is  the  invention  of  a  complicated  plot, 
spiced  with  perils,  surprises,  and  suspenses;  and  that 
anything  else  is  the  sign  of  a  poor  and  tepid  imagina- 
tion. And  not  only  people  who  seem  cultivated,  but  are 
not  so,  suppose  this,  but  there  are  sensible  persons,  and 
even  sagacious  and  intelligent  critics,  who  sometimes 
allow  themselves  to  be  hoodwinked  by  the  dramatic 
mystery  and  the  surprising  and  fantastic  scenes  of  a 
novel.  They  own  it  is  all  false;  but  they  admire  the 
imagination,  what  they  call  the  '  power '  of  the  author. 
Very  well ;  all  I  have  to  say  is  that  the  '  power '  to 
dazzle  with  strange  incidents,  to  entertain  with  compli- 
cated plots  and  impossible  characters,  now  belongs  to 

225 


CRITICISM  AND  FICTION 

some  hundreds  of  writers  in  Europe;  while  there  are 
not  much  above  a  dozen  who  know  how  to  interest  with 
the  ordinary  events  of  life,  and  by  the  portrayal  of 
characters  truly  human.  If  the  former  is  a  talent,  it 
must  be  o^vned  that  it  is  much  commoner  than  the 
latter.  ...  If  we  are  to  rate  novelists  according  to 
their  fecundity,  or  the  riches  of  their  invention,  we 
must  put  Alexander  Dumas  above  Cervantes.  Cer- 
vantes wrote  a  novel  with  the  simplest  plot,  without  be- 
lying much  or  little  the  natural  and  logical  course  of 
events.  This  novel  which  was  called  Don  Quixote,  is 
perhaps  the  greatest  work  of  human  wit.  Very  well; 
the  same  Cervantes,  mischievously  influenced  after- 
wards by  the  ideas  of  the  vulgar,  who  were  then  what 
they  are  now  and  always  will  be,  attempted  to  please 
them  by.  a  work  giving  a  lively  proof  of  his  inventive 
talent,  and  wrote  the  Persiles  and  Sigismunda,  where 
the  strange  incidents,  the  vivid  complications,  the  sur- 
prises, the  pathetic  scenes,  succeed  one  another  so 
rapidly  and  constantly  that  it  really  fatigues  you.  .  .  . 
But  in  spite  of  this  flood  of  invention,  imagine,"  says 
Senor  Valdes,  "  the  place  that  Cervantes  would  now 
occupy  in  the  heaven  of  art,  if  he  had  never  written 
Don  Quixote,"  but  only  Persiles  and  Sigismunda  ! 

From  the  point  of  view  of  modern  English  criticism, 
which  likes  to  be  melted,  and  horrified,  and  astonished, 
and  blood-curdled,  and  goose-fleshed,  no  less  than  to  be 
"  chippcred  up  "  in  fiction,  Seiior  Valdes  were  indeed 
incorrigible.  !Not  only  does  he  despise  the  novel  of 
complicated  plot,  and  everywhere  prefer  Don  Quixote 
to  Persiles  and  Sigismunda,  but  he  has  a  lively  eon- 
tempt  for  another  class  of  novels  much  in  favor  with 
the  gentilities  of  all  countries.  He  calls  their  writers 
"  novelists  of  the  world,"  and  he  says  that  more  than 
any  others  they  have  the  rage  of  effectism.     "  They  do 

226 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

not  seek  to  produce  effect  by  novelty  and  invention  in 
plot  .  .  .  they  seek  it  in  character.  For  this  end  they 
begin  by  deliberately  falsifying  human  feelings,  giving 
them  a  paradoxical  appearance  completely  inadmis- 
sible. .  .  .  Love  that  disguises  itself  as  hate,  incom- 
parable energy  under  the  cloak  of  weakness,  virginal 
innocence  under  the  aspect  of  malice  and  impudence, 
wit  masquerading  as  folly,  etc.,  etc.  By  this  means 
they  hope  to  make  an  effect  of  which  they  are  incapable 
through  the  direct,  frank,  and  conscientious  study  of 
character."  He  mentions  Octave  Feuillet  as  the  great- 
est offender  in  this  sort  among  the  French,  and  Bulwer 
among  the  English;  but  Dickens  is  full  of  it  (Boffin  in 
Our  Mutual  Friend  will  suffice  for  all  example),  and 
most  drama  is  witness  of  the  result  of  this  effectism 
when  allowed  full  play. 

But  what,  then,  if  he  is  not  pleased  with  Dumas,  or 
with  the  effectists  who  delight  genteel  people  at  all  the 
theatres,  and  in  most  of  the  romances,  what,  I  ask,  will 
satisfy  this  extremely  difficult  Spanish  gentleman? 
He  would  pretend,  very  little.  Give  him  simple,  life- 
like character ;  that  is  all  he  wants.  "  For  me,  the  only 
condition  of  character  is  that  it  be  human,  and  that  is 
enough.  If  I  wished  to  know  what  was  human,  I  should 
study  humanity." 

But,  Senor  Valdes,  Senor  Valdes !  Do  not  you  know 
that  this  small  condition  of  yours  implies  in  its  fulfil- 
ment hardly  less  than  the  gift  of  the  whole  earth  ?  You 
merely  ask  that  the  character  portrayed  in  fiction  be 
human ;  and  you  suggest  that  the  novelist  should  study 
humanity  if  he  would  know  whether  his  personages  are 
human.  This  appears  to  me  the  crudest  irony,  the 
most  sarcastic  affectation  of  humility.  If  you  had 
asked  that  character  in  fiction  be  superhuman,  or  subter- 
human,  or  preterhuman,  or  intrahuman,  and  had  bidden 

227 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

the  novelist  go,  not  to  humanity,  but  the  humanities, 
for  the  proof  of  his  excellence,  it  would  have  been  all 
very  easy.  The  books  are  full  of  those  "  creations,"  of 
every  pattern,  of  all  ages,  of  both  sexes;  and  it  is  so 
much  handier  to  get  at  books  than  to  get  at  men ;  and 
when  you  have  portrayed  "  passion  "  instead  of  feeling, 
and  used  "  power  "  instead  of  common-sense,  and  shown 
yourself  a  "  genius  "  instead  of  an  artist,  the  applause 
is  so  prompt  and  the  glory  so  cheap,  that  really  any- 
thing else  seems  wickedly  wasteful  of  one's  time.  One 
may  not  make  one's  reader  enjoy  or  suffer  nobly,  but 
one  may  give  him  the  kind  of  pleasure  that  arises  from 
conjuring,  or  from  a  puppet-sliow,  or  a  modern  stage- 
play,  and  leave  him,  if  he  is  an  old  fool,  in  tlie  sort  of 
stupor  that  comes  from  hitting  the  pipe ;  or  if  he  is  a 
young  fool,  half  crazed  with  the  spectacle  of  qualities 
and  impulses  like  his  own  in  an  apotheosis  of  achieve- 
ment and  fruition  far  beyond  any  earthly  experience. 
But  apparently  Seiior  Valdes  would  not  think  this 
any  great  artistic  result.  "  Things  that  appear  ugliest 
in  reality  to  the  spectator  who  is  not  an  artist,  are  trans- 
formed into  beauty  and  poetry  when  the  spirit  of  the 
artist  possesses  itself  of  them.  We  all  take  part  every 
day  in  a  thousand  domestic  scenes,  every  day  we  see  a 
thousand  pictures  in  life,  that  do  not  make  any  impres- 
sion upon  us,  or  if  they  make  any  it  is  one  of  repug- 
nance ;  but  let  the  novelist  come,  and  without  betraying 
the  truth,  but  painting  them  as  they  appear  to  his 
vision,  he  produces  a  most  interesting  work,  whose 
perusal  enchants  us.  That  which  in  life  left  us  indif- 
ferent, or  repelled  us,  in  art  delights  us.  Wliy  ? 
Simply  because  the  artist  has  made  us  see  the  idea  that 
resides  in  it.  Let  not  the  novelists,  then,  endeavor  to 
add  anything  to  reality,  to  turn  it  and  twist  it,  to  re- 
strict it.     Since  nature  has  endowed  them  with  tliis 

228 


CKITICISM  AND   FICTION 

precious  gift  of  discovering  ideas  in  things,  their  work 
will  l)c  bcantifnl  if  they  paint  these  as  they  appear. 
But  if  the  reality  does  not  impress  them,  in  vain  will 
they  strive  to  make  their  work  impress  others." 


XV 

Wnicn  brings  us  again,  after  this  long  way  about,  to 
Jane  Austen  and  her  novels,  and  that  troublesome  ques- 
tion about  them.  She  was  great  and  they  were  beauti- 
ful, because  she  and  they  were  honest,  and  dealt  with^'^ 
nature  nearly  a  hundred  years  ago  as  realism  deals  with'  ^ 
it  to-day.  Realism  is  nothing  more  and  nothing  less 
than  the  truthful  treatment  of  material,  and  Jane  Aus- 
ten was  the  first  and  the  last  of  the  English  novelists  to 
treat  material  with  entire  truthfulness.  Because  she 
did  this,  she  remains  the  most  artistic  of  the  English 
novelists,  and  alone  worthy  to  be  matched  with  the  great 
Scandinavian  and  Slavic  and  Latin  artists.  It  is  not  a 
question  of  intellect,  or  not  wholly  that.  The  English 
have  mind  enough ;  but  they  have  not  taste  enough ;  or, 
rather,  their  taste  has  been  perverted  by  their  false 
criticism,  which  is  based  upon  personal  preference,  and 
not  upon  principle ;  which  instructs  a  man  to  think  that 
what  he  likes  is  good,  instead  of  teaching  him  first  to 
distinguish  what  is  good  before  he  likes  It.  The  art  of 
fiction,  as  Jane  Austen  knew  it,  declined  from  her 
through  Scott,  and  Bulwer,  and  Dickens,  and  Charlotte 
Bronte,  and  Thackeray,  and  even  George  Eliot,  be- 
cause the  mania  of  romanticism  had  seized  upon  all 
Europe,  and  these  great  writers  could  not  escape  the 
taint  of  their  time;  but  it  has  shown  few  signs  of  re- 
covery in  England,  because  English  criticism,  in  the 
presence  of  the  Continental  masterpieces,  has  continued 

229 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

provincial  and  special  and  personal,  and  has  expressed 
a  love  and  a  hate  which  had  to  do  with  the  quality  of 
the  artist  rather  than  the  character  of  his  work.  It  was 
inevitable  that  in  their  time  the  English  romanticists 
shonld  treat,  as  Seilor  Valdes  says,  "  the  barbarous  cus- 
toms of  the  Middle  Ages,  softening  and  distorting  them, 
as  Walter  Scott  and  his  kind  did;"  that  they  should 
"  devote  themselves  to  falsifying  nature,  refining  and 
subtilizing  sentiment,  and  modif^^ing  psychology  after 
their  own  fancy,"  like  Bulwer  and  Dickens,  as  well  as 
like  Rousseau  and  Madame  de  Stael,  not  to  mention 
Balzac,  the  worst  of  all  that  sort  at  his  worst.  This  was 
the  natural  course  of  the  disease ;  but  it  really  seems  as 
if  it  were  their  criticism  that  was  to  blame  for  the 
rest :  not,  indeed,  for  the  performance  of  this  writer  or 
that,  for  criticism  can  never  affect  the  actual  doing  of  a 
thing;  but  for  the  esteem  in  which  this  writer  or  that 
is  held  through  the  perpetuation  of  false  ideals.  The 
only  observer  of  English  middle-class  life  since  Jane 
Austen  worthy  to  be  named  with  her  was  not  George 
Eliot,  who  was  first  ethical  and  then  artistic,  who  tran- 
scended her  in  everything  but  the  form  and  method  most 
essential  to  art,  and  there  fell  hopelessly  below  her.  It 
was  Anthony  Trollope  who  was  most  like  her  in  simple 
honesty  and  instinctive  truth,  as  imphilosophized  as  the 
light  of  common  day;  but  he  was  so  warped  from  a 
wholesome  ideal  as  to  wish  at  times  to  be  like  Thacke- 
ray, and  to  stand  about  in  his  scene,  talking  it  over 
with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  interrupting  the  action, 
and  spoiling  the  illusion  in  which  alone  the  truth  of 
art  resides.  Mainly,  his  instinct  was  too  much  for  his 
ideal,  and  with  a  low  view  of  life  in  its  civic  relations 
and  a  thoroughly  bourgeois  soul,  he  yet  produced  works 
whose  beauty  is  surpassed  only  by  the  effect  of  a  more 
poetic  writer  in  the  novels  of  Thomas  Hardy.     Yet  if 

230 


CKTTICISM  AND   FICTION 

a  vote  of  English  criticism  even  at  this  late  day,  when 
all  Continental  Enrope  has  the  light  of  aesthetic  tnith, 
could  be  taken,  the  majority  against  these  artists  would 
be  overwhelmingly  in  favor  of  a  writer  who  had  so 
little  artistic  sensibility,  that  he  never  hesitated  on 
any  occasion,  great  or  small,  to  make  a  foray  among  his 
characters,  and  catch  them  up  to  show  them  to  the 
reader  and  tell  him  how  beautiful  or  ugly  they  were; 
and  cry  out  over  their  amazing  properties. 


XVI 

"  How  few  materials,"  says  Emerson,  "  are  yet  used 
by  our  arts!  The  mass  of  creatures  and  of  qualities 
are  still  hid  and  expectant,"  and  to  break  new  ground  is 
still  one  of  the  uncommonest  and  most  heroic  of  the 
virtues.  The  artists  are  not  alone  to  blame  for  the 
timidity  that  keeps  them  in  the  old  furrows  of  the  worn- 
out  fields ;  most  of  those  whom  they  live  to  please,  or 
live  by  pleasing,  prefer  to  have  them  remain  there;  it 
wants  rare  virtue  to  appreciate  what  is  new,  as  well  as 
to  invent  it ;  and  the  "  easy  things  to  understand  "  are 
the  conventional  things.  This  is  why  the  ordinary  Eng- 
lish novel,  with  its  hackneyed  plot,  scenes,  and  figures, 
is  more  comfortable  to  the  ordinary  American  than  an 
American  novel,  which  deals,  at  its  worst,  with  com- 
paratively new  interests  and  motives.  To  adjust  one's 
self  to  the  enjoyment  of  these  costs  an  intellectual 
effort,  and  an  intellectual  effort  is  what  no  ordinary 
person  likes  to  make.  It  is  only  the  extraordinary  per- 
son who  can  say,  with  Emerson :  "  I  ask  not  for  the 
great,  the  remote,  the  romantic.  ...  I  embrace  the 
common;  I  sit  at  the  feet  of  the  familiar  and  the  low. 
.  .  .  Man  is  surprised  to  find  that  things  near  are  not 

231 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

less  beautiful  and  wondrous  than  things  remote.  .  .  . 
The  perception  of  the  worth  of  the  vulgar  is  fruitful  in 
discoveries.  .  .  .  The  foolish  man  wonders  at  the  un- 
usual, but  the  wise  man  at  the  usual.  .  .  .  To-day  al- 
ways looks  mean  to  the  thoughtless ;  but  to-day  is  a  king 
in  disguise.  .  .  .  Banks  and  tariffs,  the  newspaper  and 
caucus,  Methodism  and  Unitarianism,  are  flat  and  dull 
to  dull  people,  but  rest  on  the  same  foundations  of 
wonder  as  the  town  of  Troy  and  the  temple  of  Del- 
phos." 

Perhaps  we  ought  not  to  deny  their  town,  of  Troy 
and  their  temple  of  Delphos  to  the  dull  people;  but  if 
we  ought,  and  if  we  did,  they  would  still  insist  upon 
having  them.  An  English  novel,  full  of  titles  and  rank, 
is  apparently  essential  to  the  happiness  of  such  people ; 
their  weak  and  childish  imagination  is  at  home  in  its 
familiar  environment;  they  know  what  they  are  read- 
ing; the  fact  that  it  is  hash  many  times  warmed  over 
reassures  them;  whereas  a  story  of  our  own  life, 
honestly  studied  and  faithfully  represented,  troubles 
them  with  varied  misgiving.  They  are  not  sure  that  it 
is  literature ;  they  do  not  feel  that  it  is  good  society ;  its 
characters,  so  like  their  own,  strike  them  as  common- 
place ;  they  say  they  do  not  wish  to  know  such  people. 

Everything  in  England  is  appreciable  to  the  literary 
sense,  while  the  sense  of  the  literary  worth  of  things  in 
America  is  still  faint  and  weak  with  most  people,  with 
the  vast  majority  who  "  ask  for  the  great,  the  remote, 
the  romantic,"  who  cannot  "  embrace  the  common," 
cannot  "  sit  at  the  feet  of  the  familiar  and  the  low,"  in 
the  good  company  of  Emerson.  We  are  all,  or  nearly 
all,  struggling  to  be  distinguished  from  the  mass,  and 
to  be  set  apart  in  select  circles  and  upper  classes  like  the 
fine  people  we  have  read  about.  We  are  really  a  mix- 
ture of  the  plebeian  ingredients  of  the  whole  world; 

o.qo 


CKITICISIiC   AND   FICTION 

but  that  is  not  bad ;  our  vuli»-aritj  consists  in  trying  to 
ignore  "  the  worth  of  the  vulgar/'  in  believing  that  the 
superfine  is  better.  » 


XVTT 

Another  Spanish  novelist  of  our  day,  whose  books 
have  given  me  great  pleasure,  is  so  far  from  being  of 
the  same  mind  of  Senor  Valdes  about  fiction  that  he 
boldly  declares  himself,  in  the  preface  to  his  Pepita 
Ximcnez,  "  an  advocate  of  art  for  art's  sake."  I 
heartily  agree  with  him  that  it  is  "  in  very  bad  taste, 
always  impertinent  and  often  pedantic,  to  attempt  to 
prove  theses  by  writing  stories,"  and  yet  if  it  is  true 
that  "  the  object  of  a  novel  should  be  to  charm  through 
a  faithful  representation  of  human  actions  and  human 
passions,  and  to  create  by  this  fidelity  to  nature  a 
beautiful  work,"  and  if  "  the  creation  of  the  beautiful  " 
is  solely  "  the  object  of  art,"  it  never  was  and  never  can 
be  solely  its  effect  as  long  as  men  are  men  and  women 
are.  women.  If  ever  the  race  is  resolved  into  abstract 
qualities,  perhaps  this  may  happen;  but  till  then  the 
finest  effect  of  the  "  beautiful "  will  be  ethical  and  not 
a?stlietic  merely.  Morality  penetrates  all  things,  it  is 
the  soul  of  all  things.  Beauty  may  clothe  it  on, 
whether  it  is  false  morality  and  an  evil  soul,  or 
whether  it  is  true  and  a  good  soul.  In  the  one  case  the 
beauty  will  corrupt,  and  in  the  other  it  will  edify,  and 
in  either  case  it  will  infallibly  and  inevitably  have  an 
ethical  effect,  now  light,  now  grave,  according  as  the 
thing  is  light  or  grave.  We  cannot  escape  from  this ;  we 
are  shut  np  to  it  by  the  very  conditions  of  our  being. 
Tor  the  moment,  it  is  charming  to  have  a  story  end 
happily,  but  after  one  has  lived  a  certain  number  of 

233 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

years,  and  read  a  certain  nnmber  of  novels,  it  is  not  the 
prosperous  or  adverse  fortune  of  the  characters  that 
affects  one,  but  the  good  or  bad  faith  of  the  novelist  in 
dealing  with  them.  Will  he  play  us  false  or  will  he  be 
true  in  the  operation  of  this  or  that  principle  involved  ? 
I  cannot  hold  him  to  less  account  than  this :  he  must  be 
true  to  what  life  has  taught  me  is  the  truth,  and  after 
that  he  may  let  any  fate  betide  his  people;  the  novel 
ends  well  that  ends  faithfully.  The  greater  his  power, 
the  greater  his  responsibility  before  the  human  con- 
science, which  is  God  in  us.  But  men  come  and  go, 
and  what  they  do  in  their  limited  physical  lives  is  of 
comparatively  little  moment ;  it  is  what  they  say  that 
really  survives  to  bless  or  to  ban ;  and  it  is  the  evil 
wdiich  Wordsworth  felt  in  Goethe,  that  must  long  sur- 
vive him.  There  is  a  kind  of  thing — a  kind  of  meta- 
physical lie  against  righteousness  and  common-sense — 
which  is  called  the  Unmoral,  and  is  supposed  to  be  dif- 
ferent from  the  Immoral;  and  it  is  this  which  is  sup- 
posed to  cover  many  of  the  faults  of  Goethe.  His  Wil- 
Jielm  Meister,  for  example,  is  so  far  removed  within  the 
region  of  the  "  ideal  "  that  its  unprincipled,  its  evil- 
principled,  tenor  in  regard  to  women  is  pronounced 
"  unmorality,"  and  is  therefore  inferably  harmless. 
But  no  study  of  Goethe  is  complete  without  some  recog- 
nition of  the  qualities  which  caused  Wordsworth  to 
hurl  the  book  across  the  room  with  an  indignant  per- 
ception of  its  sensuality.  For  the  sins  of  his  life 
Goethe  was  perhaps  sufficiently  punished  in  his  life  by 
his  final  marriage  with  Christiano ;  for  the  sins  of  his 
literature  many  others  must  suffer.  I  do  not  despair, 
however,  of  the  day  when  the  poor  honest  herd  of  man- 
kind shall  give  universal  utterance  to  the  universal  in- 
stinct, and  shall  hold  selfish  power  in  politics,  in  art, 
in  religion,  for  the  devil  that  it  is;  when  neither  its 
^    234 


CEITICISM  AND  FICTION 

crazy  pride  nor  its  amusing  vanity  shall  be  flattered  by 
the  puissance  of  the  "  geniuses  "  who  have  forgotten 
their  duty  to  the  common  weakness,  and  have  abused 
it  to  their  own  glory.  In  that  day  wo  shall  shudder  at 
many  monsters  of  passion,  of  self-indulgence,  of  heart- 
lessness,  whom  we  still  more  or  less  openly  adore  for 
their  "  genius,"  and  shall  account  no  man  worshipful 
whom  we  do  not  feel  and  know  to  be  good.  The  spec- 
tacle of  strenuous  achievement  will  then  not  dazzle  or 
mislead ;  it  will  not  sanctify  or  palliate  iniquity ;  it  will 
only  render  it  the  more  hideous  and  pitiable. 

In  fact,  the  whole  belief  in  "  genius  "  seems  to  me 
rather  a  mischievous  superstition,  and  if  not  mis- 
chievous always,  still  always  a  superstition.  From  the 
account  of  those  who  talk  about  it,  "  genius  "  appears 
to  be  the  attribute  of  a  sort  of  very  potent  and  admir- 
able prodigy  which  God  has  created  out  of  the  common 
for  the  astonishment  and  confusion  of  the  rest  of  us 
poor  human  beings.  But  do  they  really  believe  it? 
Do  they  mean  anything  more  or  less  than  the  Mastery 
which  comes  to  any  man  according  to  his  powers  and 
diligence  in  any  direction  ?  If  not,  why  not  have  an 
end  of  the  superstition  which  has  caused  our  race  to  go 
on  so  long  waiting  and  reading  of  the  difference  be- 
tween talent  and  genius  ?  It  is  within  the  memory  of 
middle-aged  men  that  the  Maelstrom  existed  in  the  be- 
lief of  the  geographers,  but  we  now  get  on  perfectly  well 
without  it;  and  why  should  we  still  suffer  under  the 
notion  of  "  genius  "  which  keeps  so  many  poor  little 
authorlings  trembling  in  question  whether  they  have  it, 
or  have  only  "  talent  "  ? 

One  of  the  greatest  captains  who  ever  lived — a  plain, 
taciturn,  unaffected  soul  —  has  told  the  story  of  his 
wonderful  life  as  unconsciously  as  if  it  were  all  an 
every-day  affair,  not  different  from  other  lives,  except 

235 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

as  a  great  exigcncj^  of  the  human  race  gave  it  impor- 
tance. So  far  as  he  knew,  lie  had  no  natural  aptitude 
for  arms,  and  certainly  no  love  for  the  calling.  But  he 
Avent  to  West  Point  hecause,  as  he  quaintly  tells  us,  his 
father  "  rather  thought  he  v^rould  go  " ;  and  he  fought 
through  one  war  with  credit,  hut  without  glory.  The 
other  war,  which  was  to  claim  his  powers  and  his 
science,  found  him  engaged  in  the  most  prosaic  of  peace- 
ful occupations ;  he  obeyed  its  call  because  he  loved  his 
country,  and  not  because  he  loved  war.  All  the  world 
knows  the  rest,  and  all  the  world  knows  that  greater 
military  mastery  has  not  been  shown  than  his  cam- 
paigns illustrated.  He  does  not  say  this  in  his  book, 
or  hint  it  in  any  way ;  he  gives  you  the  facts,  and  leaves 
them  with  you.  But  the  Personal  Memoirs  of  U.  S. 
Grant,  wi'itten  as  simply  and  straightforwardly  as  his 
battles  were  fought,  couched  in  the  most  unpretentious 
phrase,  with  never  a  touch  of  grandiosity  or  attitudi- 
nizing, familiar,  homely  in  style,  form  a  great  piece  of 
literature,  because  great  literature  is  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  the  clear  expression  of  minds  that  have  some- 
thing great  in  them,  whether  religion,  or  beauty,  or 
deep  experience.  Probably  Grant  would  have  said  that 
he  had  no  more  vocation  to  literature  than  he  had  to 
war.  He  owns,  with  something  like  contrition,  that  he 
used  to  read  a  great  many  novels;  but  we  think  he 
would  have  denied  the  soft  impeachment  of  literary 
power,  l^evertheless,  he  shows  it,  as  he  showed  mili- 
tary power,  unexpectedly,  almost  miraculously.  All 
the  conditions  here,  then,  are  favorable  to  supposing  a 
case  of  "  genius."  Yet  who  would  trifle  with  that  great 
heir  of  fame,  that  plain,  grand,  manly  soul,  by  speak- 
ing of  "genius"  and  him  together?  Who  calls  Wash- 
ington a  genius  ?  or  Franklin,  or  Bismarck,  or  Cavour, 
or  Columbus,  or  Luther,  or  Darwin,  or  Lincoln  ?    Were 

230 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

these  men  second-rate  in  their  way  ?  Or  is  "  genius  " 
that  indefinahlc,  preternatural  quality,  sacred  to  the 
musicians,  the  painters,  the  sculptors,  the  actors,  the 
poets,  and  above  all,  the  poets  ?  Or  is  it  that  the  poets, 
having  most  of  the  say  in  this  world,  abuse  it  to  shame- 
less self-flattery,  and  would  persuade  the  inarticulate 
classes  that  they  are  on  peculiar  terms  of  confidence 
with  the  deity  ? 

XVIII 

In  General  Grant's  confession  of  novel-reading  there 
is  a  sort  of  inference  that  he  had  wasted  his  time,  or 
else  the  guilty  conscience  of  the  novelist  in  me  imagines 
such  an  inference.  But  however  this  may  be,  there  is 
certainly  no  question  concerning  the  intention  of  a 
correspondent  who  once  wrote  to  me  after  reading  some 
rather  bragging  claims  I  had  made  for  fiction  as  a 
mental  and  moral  means.  "  I  have  very  grave  doubts," 
he  said,  "  as  to  the  whole  list  of  magnificent  things  that 
you  seem  to  think  novels  have  done  for  the  race,  and 
can  witness  in  myself  many  evil  things  which  they  have 
done  for  me.  Whatever  in  my  mental  make-up  is  wild 
and  visionary,  whatever  is  untrue,  whatever  is  in- 
jurious, I  can  trace  to  the  perusal  of  some  work  of 
fiction.  Worse  than  that,  they  beget  such  high-strung 
and  supersensitive  ideas  of  life  that  plain  industry  and 
plodding  perseverance  are  despised,  and  matter-of-fact 
poverty,  or  every  -  day,  commonplace  distress,  meets 
with  no  sympathy,  if  indeed  noticed  at  all,  by  one  who 
has  wept  over  the  impossibly  accumulated  sufferings 
of  some  gaudy  hero  or  heroine." 

I  am  not  sure  that  I  had  the  controversy  with  this 
correspondent  that  he  seemed  to  suppose ;  but  novels  are 
now  so  fully  accepted  hy  every  one  pretending  to  culti- 
16  237 


CEITICISil  AND   FICTION 

vated  taste — and  they  really  form  the  whole  intellectual 
life  of  such  immense  numbers  of  people,  without  ques- 
tion of  their  influence,  good  or  bad,  upon  the  mind — 
that  it  is  refreshing  to  have  them  frankly  denounced, 
and  to  be  invited  to  revise  one's  ideas  and  feelings  in 
regard  to  them.  A  little  honesty,  or  a  great  deal  of 
honesty,  in  this  quest  will  do  the  novel,  as  we  hope  yet 
to  have  it,  and  as  we  have  already  begun  to  have  it,  no 
harm ;  and  for  my  own  part  I  w^ill  confess  that  I  be- 
lieve fiction  in  the  past  to  have  been  largely  injurious, 
as  I  believe  the  stage-play  to  be  still  almost  wholly  in- 
jurious, through  its  falsehood,  its  folly,  its  wantonness, 
and  its  aimlessness.  It  may  be  safely  assumed  that 
most  of  the  novel-reading  which  people  fancy  an  intel- 
lectual pastime  is  the  emptiest  dissipation,  hardly  more 
related  to  thought  or  the  wholesome  exercise  of  the 
mental  faculties  than  opium-eating;  in  either  case  the 
brain  is  drugged,  and  left  weaker  and  crazier  for  the 
debauch.  If  this  may  be  called  the  negative  result  of 
the  fiction  habit,  the  positive  injury  that  most  novels 
work  is  by  no  means  so  easily  to  be  measured  in  the 
case  of  young  men  whose  character  they  help  so  much  to 
form  or  deform,  and  the  women  of  all  ages  whom  they 
keep  so  much  in  ignorance  of  the  world  they  misrepre- 
sent. Grown  men  have  little  harm  from  them,  but  in 
the  other  cases,  which  are  the  vast  majority,  they  hurt 
because  they  are  not  true — not  because  they  are  ma- 
levolent, but  because  they  are  idle  lies  about  human 
nature  and  the  social  fabric,  which  it  behooves  us  to 
know  and  to  understand,  that  we  may  deal  justly  with 
ourselves  and  with  one  another.  One  need  not  go  so  far 
as  our  correspondent,  and  trace  to  the  fiction  habit 
"  whatever  is  wild  and  visionary,  whatever  is  untrue, 
whatever  is  injurious,"  in  one's  life ;  bad  as  the  fiction 
habit  is  it  is  probably  not  responsible  for  the  whole  sum 

238 


CRITICISM   AND  FICTION 

of  evil  in  its  victims,  and  I  believe  that  if  the  reader 
will  use  care  in  choosing  from  this  fungus-growth  with 
which  the  fields  of  literature  teem  every  day,  he  may 
nourish  himself  as  with  the  true  mushroom,  at  no  risk 
from  the  poisonous  species. 

The  tests  are  very  plain  and  simple,  and  they  are 
jDerfectly  infallible.  If  a  novel  flatters  the  passions, 
and  exalts  them  above  the  principles,  it  is  poisonous ; 
it  may  not  kill,  but  it  will  certainly  injure ;  and  this  test 
will  alone  exclude  an  entire  class  of  fiction,  of  which 
eminent  examples  will  occur  to  all.  Then  the  whole 
spawn  of  so-called  unmoral  romances,  which  imagine 
a  world  where  the  sins  of  sense  are  unvisited  by  the 
penalties  following,  swift  or  slow,  but  inexorably  sure, 
in  the  real  world,  are  deadly  poison :  these  do  kill.  The 
novels  that  merely  tickle  our  prejudices  and  lull  our 
judgment,  or  that  coddle  our  sensibilities  or  pamper 
our  gross  appetite  for  the  marvellous,  are  not  so  fatal, 
but  they  are  innutritions,  and  clog  the  soul  with  un- 
wholesome vapors  of  all  kinds.  !No  doubt  they  too  help 
to  weaken  the  moral  fibre,  and  make  their  readers  in- 
different to  "  plodding  perseverance  and  plain  indus- 
try," and  to  "  matter-of-fact  poverty  and  commonplace 
distress." 

Without  taking  them  too  seriously,  it  still  must  be 
owned  that  the  "  gaudy  hero  and  heroine  "  are  to  blame 
for  a  great  deal  of  harm  in  the  world.  That  heroine 
long  taught  by  example,  if  not  precept,  that  Love,  or 
the  passion  or  fancy  she  mistook  for  it,  was  the  chief 
interest  of  a  life,  which  is  really  concerned  with  a  great 
many  other  things;  that  it  was  lasting  in  the  way  she 
knew  it ;  that  it  was  worthy  of  every  sacrifice,  and  was 
altogether  a  finer  tiling  than  prudence,  obedience, 
reason ;  that  love  alone  was  glorious  and  beautiful,  and 
these  were  mean  and  ugly  in  comparison  with  it.    More 

239. 


ckiticis:m  and  fiction 

latc'lj  she  Las  begun  to  idolize  and  illiistrato  Duty,  and 
she  is  hardly  less  mischievous  in  this  neAv  role,  opposing 
duty,  as  she  did  love,  to  prndenoc,  ohodionce,  and 
reason.  The  stock  hero,  wlioni,  if  we  met  him,  we  could 
not  fail  to  see  was  a  most  deplorable  person,  has  un- 
doubtedly imposed  himself  upon  the  victims  of  the 
fiction  habit  as  aduiirable.  With  him,  too,  love  was  and 
is  the  great  affair,  whether  in  its  old  romantic  phase  of 
chivalrous  achievement  or  manifold  suffering  for  love's 
sake,  or  its  more  recent  development  of  the  "  virile," 
the  bullying,  and  the  brutal,  or  its  still  more  recent 
agonies  of  self-sacrifice,  as  idle  and  useless  as  the  moral 
experiences  of  the  insane  asylums.  With  his  vain 
posturings  and  his  ridiculous  splendor  he  is  really  a 
painted  barbarian,  the  prey  of  his  passions  and  his  de- 
lusions, full  of  obsolete  ideals,  and  the  motives  and 
ethics  of  a  savage,  which  the  guilty  author  of  his  being 
does  his  best — or  his  worst — in  spite  of  his  own  light 
and  knowledge,  to  foist  upon  the  reader  as  something 
generous  and  noble.  I  am  not  merely  bringing  this 
charge  against  that  sort  of  fiction  which  is  beneath 
literature  and  outside  of  it,  "  the  shoreless  lakes  of 
ditch-water,"  whose  miasms  fill  the  air  below  the 
empyrean  where  the  great  ones  sit;  but  I  am  accusing 
the  work  of  some  of  the  most  famous,  who  have,  in  this 
instance  or  in  that,  sinned  against  the  truth,  which  can 
alone  exalt  and  purify  men.  I  do  not  say  that  they 
have  constantly  done  so,  or  even  commonly  done  so; 
but  that  they  have  done  so  at  all  marks  them  as  of  the 
past,  to  be  read  with  the  due  historical  allowance  for 
their  epoch  and  their  conditions.  For  I  believe  that, 
while  inferior  writers  will  and  must  continue  to  imi- 
tate them  in  their  foibles  and  their  errors,  no  one  here- 
after will  be  able  to  achieve  greatness  who  is  false  to 
humanity,  either  in  its  facts  or  its  duties.    The  light  of 

240 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

civilization  has  already  broken  oven  npon  the  novel, 
and  no  conseiciitions  man  can  now  set  ahont  painting 
an  image  of  life  without  perpetual  question  of  the 
verity  of  his  work,  and  without  feeling  bound  to  distin- 
guish so  clearly  that  no  reader  of  his  may  be  misled, 
between  what  is  right  and  what  is  wrong,  what  is  noble 
and  what  is  base,  what  is  health  and  what  is  perdition, 
in  the  actions  and  the  characters  he  portrays. 

The  fiction  that  aims  merely  to  entertain — the  fiction 
that  is  to  serious  fiction  as  the  opera-bouffe,  the  ballet, 
and  the  pantomime  are  to  the  true  drama  —  need  not 
feel  the  burden  of  this  obligation  so  deeply;  but  even 
such  fiction  will  not  be  gay  or  trivial  to  any  reader's 
hurt,  and  criticism  should  hold  it  to  account  if  it 
passes  from  painting  to  teaching  folly. 

I  confess  that  I  do  not  care  to  judge  any  work  of  the 
imagination  without  first  of  all  applying  this  test  to 
it.  We  must  ask  ourselves  before  we  ask  anything 
else,  Is  it  true  ? — true  to  the  motives,  the  impulses,  the 
principles  that  shape  the  life  of  actual  men  and 
women?  This  truth,  which  necessarily  includes  the 
highest  morality  and  the  highest  artistry — this  truth 
given,  the  book  cannot  be  wicked  and  cannot  be  weak; 
and  without  it  all  graces  of  style  and  feats  of  invention 
and  cunning  of  construction  are  so  many  superfluities 
of  naughtiness.  It  is  well  for  the  truth  to  have  all 
these,  and  shine  in  them,  but  for  falsehood  they  are 
merely  meretricious,  the  bedizenment  of  the  wanton; 
they  atone  for  nothing,  they  count  for  nothing.  But  in 
fact  they  come  naturally  of  truth,  and  grace  it  without 
solicitation;  they  are  added  unto  it.  In  the  whole 
range  of  fiction  I  know  of  no  true  picture  of  life — 
that  is,  of  human  nature — which  is  not  also  a  master- 
piece of  literature,  full  of  divine  and  natural  beauty. 
It  may  have  no  touch  or  tint  of  this  special  civilization 

241 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

or  of  that ;  it  had  better  have  this  local  color  well  ascer- 
tained; but  the  truth  is  deeper  and  finer  than  aspects, 
and  if  the  book  is  true  to  what  men  and  women  know 
of  one  another's  souls  it  will  be  true  enough,  and  it 
will  be  great  and  beautiful.  It  is  the  conception  of 
literature  as  something  apart  from  life,  superfinely 
aloof,  which  makes  it  really  unimportant  to  the  great 
mass  of  mankind,  without  a  message  or  a  meaning  for 
them ;  and  it  is  the  notion  that  a  novel  mav  be  false  in 
its  portrayal  of  causes  and  effects  that  makes  literary 
art  contemptible  even  to  those  whom  it  amuses,  that 
forbids  them  to  regard  the  novelist  as  a  serious  or 
right-minded  person.  If  they  do  not  in  some  moment 
of  indignation  cry  out  against  all  novels,  as  my  corre- 
spondent does,  they  remain  besotted  in  the  fume  of 
the  delusions  purveyed  to  them,  with  no  higher  feeling 
for  the  author  than  such  maudlin  affection  as  the 
frequenter  of  an  opium  -  joint  perhaps  knows  for  the 
attendant  who  fills  his  pipe  with  the  drug. 

Or,  as  in  the  case  of  another  correspondent  who 
writes  that  in  his  youth  he  "  read  a  great  many  novels, 
but  always  regarded  it  as  an  amusement,  like  horse- 
racing  and  card-playing,"  for  which  he  had  no  time 
when  he  entered  upon  the  serious  business  of  life,  it 
renders  them  merely  contemptuous.  His  view  of  the 
matter  may  be  commended  to  the  brotherhood  and 
sisterhood  of  novelists  as  full  of  wholesome  if  bitter 
suggestion ;  and  I  urge  them  not  to  dismiss  it  with  high 
literary  scorn  as  that  of  some  Boeotian  dull  to  the 
beauty  of  art.  Refuse  it  as  we  may,  it  is  still  the  feel- 
ing of  the  vast  majority  of  people  for  whom  life  is 
earnest,  and  who  find  only  a  distorted  and  misleading 
likeness  of  it  in  our  books.  We  may  fold  ourselves  in 
our  scholars'  gowns,  and  close  the  doors  of  our  studies, 
and  affect  to  despise  this  rude  voice;  but  we  cannot 

242 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

shut  it  out.  It  comes  to  us  from  wherever  men  are  at 
Avork,  from  wherever  they  arc  truly  living,  and  accuses 
us  of  unfaitlif Illness,  of  triviality,  of  mere  stage-play; 
and  none  of  us  can  escape  conviction  except  he  prove 
himself  worthy  of  his  time — a  time  in  which  the  great 
masters  have  brought  literature  hack  to  life,  and  filled 
its  ebbing  veins  with  the  red  tides  of  reality.  We  can- 
not all  equal  them ;  we  need  not  copy  them ;  but  we  can 
all  go  to  the  sources  of  their  inspiration  and  their 
power ;  and  to  draw  from  these  no  one  need  go  far — no 
one  need  really  go  out  of  himself. 

Fifty  years  ago,  Carlyle,  in  whom  the  truth  was 
always  alive,  but  in  whom  it  was  then  unperverted  by 
suffering,  by  celebrity,  and  by  despair,  wrote  in  his 
study  of  Diderot :  "  Were  it  not  reasonable  to  prophesy 
that  this  exceeding  great  multitude  of  novel  -  writers 
and  such  like  must,  in  a  new  generation,  gradually  do 
one  of  two  things :  either  retire  into  the  nurseries,  and 
work  for  children,  minors,  and  semi  -  fatuous  persons 
of  both  sexes,  or  else,  what  were  far  better,  sweep  their 
novel-fabric  into  the  dust-cart,  and  betake  themselves 
with  such  faculty  as  they  have  to  understand  and  re- 
cord what  is  true,  of  which  surely  there  is,  and  will 
forever  be,  a  whole  infinitude  unknown  to  us  of  infinite 
importance  to  us  ?  Poetry,  it  will  more  and  more  come 
to  be  understood,  is  nothing  but  higher  knowledge; 
and  the  only  genuine  Romance  (for  grown  persons), 
Eeality." 

If,  after  half  a  century,  fiction  still  mainly  works 
for  "  children,  minors,  and  semi  -  fatuous  persons  of 
both  sexes,"  it  is  nevertheless  one  of  the  hopefulest 
signs  of  the  world's  progress  that  it  has  begun  to  work 
for  "  grown  persons,"  and  if  not  exactly  in  the  way 
that  Carlyle  might  have  solely  intended  in  urging  its 
writers  to  compile  memoirs   instead   of  building  the 

243 


CRITICISM  AND  FICTION 

"novel-fabric,"  still  it  has,  in  the  highest  and  widest 
sense,  already  made  Kealitj  its  Romance.  I  cannot 
judge  it,  I  do  not  even  care  for  it,  except  as  it  has  done 
this;  and  I  can  hardly  conceive  of  a  literary  self-re- 
spect in  these  days  compatible  with  the  old  trade  of 
make-believe,  with  the  production  of  the  kind  of  fic- 
tion which  is  too  much  honored  by  classification  with 
card-playing  and  horse-racing.  But  let  fiction  cease 
to  lie  about  life ;  let  it  portray  men  and  women  as  they 
are,  actuated  by  the  motives  and  the  passions  in  the 
measure  we  all  know;  let  it  leave  off  painting  dolls 
and  working  them  by  springs  and  wires ;  let  it  show  the 
different  interests  in  their  true  proportions;  let  it  for- 
bear to  preach  pride  and  revenge,  folly  and  insanity, 
egotism  and  prejudice,  but  frankly  own  these  for  what 
they  are,  in  whatever  figures  and  occasions  they  ap- 
pear; let  it  not  put  on  fine  literary  airs;  let  it  speak 
the  dialect,  the  language,  that  most  Americans  know — 
the  language  of  unaffected  people  everywhere  —  and 
there  can  be  no  doubt  of  an  unlimited  future,  not  only 
of  delightfulness  but  of  usefulness,  for  it. 


XIX 

Tins  is  what  I  say  in  my  severer  moods,  but  at 
other  times  I  know  that,  of  course,  no  one  is  going  to 
hold  all  fiction  to  such  strict  account.  There  is  a 
great  deal  of  it  which  may  be  very  well  left  to  amuse 
us,  if  it  can,  when  wo  arc  sick  or  when  we  are  silly, 
and  I  am  not  inclined  to  despise  it  in  the  performance 
of  this  office.  Or,  if  people  find  pleasure  in  having 
tlicir  blood  curdled  for  the  sake  of  having  it  uncurdled 
again  at  the  end  of  the  book,  I  would  not  interfere 
with    their    amusement,    though    I    do    not   desire    it. 

244 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

There  is  a  certain  demand  in  primitive  natures  for  the 
kind  of  fiction  that  does  this,  and  the  anthor  of  it  is 
nsnally  very  proud  of  it.  The  kind  of  novels  he  likes, 
and  likes  to  write,  are  intended  to  take  his  reader's 
mind,  or  what  that  reader  would  probably  call  his 
mind,  off  himself ;  they  make  one  forget  life  and  all  its 
cares  and  duties ;  they  are  not  in  the  least  like  the 
novels  which  make  you  think  of  these,  and  shame  you 
into  at  least  wishing  to  be  a  helpful] er  and  wholesomer 
creature  than  you  are.  No  sordid  details  of  verity 
here,  if  you  please ;  no  wretched  being  humbly  and 
weakly  struggling  to  do  right  and  to  be  true,  suffering 
for  his  follies  and  his  sins,  tasting  joy  only  through 
the  mortification  of  self,  and  in  the  help  of  others ; 
nothing  of  all  this,  but  a  great,  whirling  splendor  of 
peril  and  achievement,  a  wild  scene  of  heroic  adven- 
ture and  of  emotional  ground  and  lofty  tumbling, 
Avith  a  stage  "  picture  "  at  the  fall  of  the  curtain, 
and  all  the  good  characters  in  a  row,  their  left 
hands  pressed  upon  their  hearts,  and  kissing  their 
right  hands  to  the  audience,  in  the  old  way  that 
has  always  charmed  and  always  will  charm,  Heaven 
bless  it! 

In  a  world  which  loves  the  spectacular  drama  and 
the  practically  bloodless  sports  of  the  modern  amphi- 
theatre the  author  of  this  sort  of  fiction  has  his  place, 
and  we  must  not  seek  to  destroy  him  because  he  fancies 
it  the  first  place.  In  fact,  it  is  a  condition  of  his  doing 
well  the  kind  of  work  he  does  that  he  should  think  it 
important,  that  he  should  believe  in  himself;  and  I 
would  not  take  away  this  faith  of  his,  even  if  I  could. 
As  I  say,  he  has  his  place.  The  world  often  likes  to 
forget  itself,  and  he  brings  on  his  heroes,  his  goblins, 
his  feats,  his  hair-breadth  escapes,  his  imminent  deadly 
breaches,  and  the  poor,  foolish,  childish  old  world  re- 

245 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

news  the  excitements  of  its  ..^nage.  Perhaps  this  is 
a  work  of  beneficence;  and  perhaps  onr  brave  con- 
jurer in  his  cabalistic  robe  is  a  philanthropist  in  dis- 
guise. 

Within  the  last  four  or  five  years  there  has  been 
throughout  the  whole  English  -  speaking  world  what 
Mr.  Grant  Allen  happily  calls  the  "  recrudescence " 
of  taste  in  fiction.  The  effect  is  less  noticeable  in 
America  than  in  England,  where  effete  Philistinism, 
conscious  of  the  dry-rot  of  its  conventionality,  is  cast- 
ing about  for  cure  in  anything  that  is  wild  and  strange 
and  unlike  itself.  But  the  recrudescence  has  been 
evident  enough  here,  too;  and  a  writer  in  one  of  our 
periodicals  has  put  into  convenient  shape  some  com- 
mon errors  concerning  popularity  as  a  test  of  merit 
in  a  book.  He  seems  to  think,  for  instance,  that  the 
love  of  the  marvellous  and  impossible  in  fiction,  which 
is  shown  not  only  by  "  the  unthinking  multitude 
clamoring  about  the  book  counters  "  for  fiction  of  that 
sort,  but  by  the  "  literary  elect "  also,  is  proof  of 
some  principle  in  human  nature  which  ought  to  be  re- 
spected as  well  as  tolerated.  He  seems  to  believe  that 
the  ebullition  of  this  passion  forms  a  sufficient  answer 
to  those  who  say  that  art  should  represent  life,  and 
that  the  art  which  misrepresents  life  is  feeble  art  and 
false  art.  But  it  appears  to  me  that  a  little  carefuller 
reasoning  from  a  little  closer  inspection  of  the  facts 
would  not  have  brought  him  to  these  conclusions.  In 
the  first  place,  I  doubt  very  much  whether  the  "  liter- 
ary elect "  have  been  fascinated  in  great  numbers  by 
the  fiction  in  question ;  but  if  I  supposed  them  to  have 
really  fallen  under  that  spell,  I  should  still  be  able 
to  account  for  their  fondness  and  that  of  the  "  un- 
thinking multitude  "  upon  the  same  grounds,  without 
honoring  either  very  much.     It  is  the  habit  of  hasty 

246 


CKITICISM  AND   FICTION 

casuists  to  regard  civilization  as  inclusive  of  all  the 
members  of  a  civilized  community ;  but  this  is  a  pal- 
pable error.  Many  persons  in  every  civilized  com- 
munity live  in  a  state  of  more  or  less  evident  savagery 
with  respect  to  their  habits,  their  morals,  and  their 
propensities;  and  they  are  held  in  check  only  by  the 
law.  Many  more  yet  are  savage  in  their  tastes,  as 
they  show  by  the  decoration  of  their  houses  and  per- 
sons, and  by  their  choice  of  books  and  pictures ;  and 
these  are  left  to  the  restraints  of  public  opinion.  In 
fact,  no  man  can  be  said  to  be  thoroughly  civilized  or 
always  civilized ;  the  most  refined,  the  most  enlight- 
ened person  has  his  moods,  his  moments  of  barbarism, 
in  which  the  best,  or  even  the  second  best,  shall  not 
please  him.  At  these  times  the  lettered  and  the  un- 
lettered are  alike  primitive  and  their  gratifications  are 
of  the  same  simple  sort;  the  highly  cultivated  person 
may  then  like  melodrama,  impossible  fiction,  and  the 
trapeze  as  sincerely  and  thoroughly  as  a  boy  of  thirteen 
or  a  barbarian  of  any  age. 

I  do  not  blame  him  for  these  moods ;  I  find  some- 
thing instructive  and  interesting  in  them ;  but  if  they 
lastingly  established  themselves  in  him,  I  could  not 
help  deploring  the  state  of  that  person.  "No  one  can 
really  think  that  the  "  literary  elect,"  who  are  said  to 
have  joined  the  "  unthinking  multitude  "  in  clamor- 
ing about  the  book  counters  for  the  romances  of  no- 
man's  land,  take  the  same  kind  of  pleasure  in  them  as 
they  do  in  a  novel  of  Tolstoy,  Tourguenief,  George 
Eliot,  Thackeray,  Balzac,  Manzoni,  Ha^vthorne,  Mr. 
Henry  James,  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  Senor  Palacio  Val- 
des,  or  even  Walter  Scott.  They  have  joined  the  "  un- 
thinking multitude,"  perhaps  because  they  are  tired 
of  thinking,  and  expect  to  find  relaxation  in  feeling — 
feeling  crudely,  grossly,  merely.     For  once  in  a  way 

24Y 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

tlicre  is  no  great  harm  in  this ;  perhaps  no  harm  at  all. 
It  is  perfectly  natural;  let  them  have  their  innocent 
debauch.  But  let  us  disting^uish,  for  our  own  sake 
and  guidance,  between  the  different  kinds  of  things 
that  please  the  same  kind  of  people;  between  the 
things  that  please  them  habitually  and  those  that  please 
tliem  occasionally;  between  the  pleasures  that  edify 
them  and  those  that  amuse  them.  Otherwise  we  shall 
be  in  danger  of  becoming  permanently  part  of  the 
"  unthinking  multitude,"  and  of  remaining  puerile, 
primitive,  savage.  We  shall  be  so  in  moods  and  at 
moments;  but  let  us  not  fancy  that  those  are  high 
moods  or  fortunate  moments.  If  they  are  harmless, 
that  is  the  most  that  can  be  said  for  them.  They  are 
lapses  from  which  we  can  perhaps  go  forward  more 
vigorously;  but  even  this  is  not  certain. 

My  own  philosophy  of  the  matter,  however,  would 
not  bring  me  to  prohibition  of  such  literary  amuse- 
ments as  the  writer  quoted  seems  to  find  significant  of 
a  growing  indifference  to  truth  and  sanity  in  fiction. 
Once  more,  I  say,  these  amusements  have  their  place, 
as  the  circus  has,  and  the  burlesque  and  negro 
minstrelsy,  and  the  ballet,  and  prestidigitation.  No 
one  of  these  is  to  be  despised  in  its  place;  but  we  had 
better  understand  that  it  is  not  the  highest  place,  and 
that  it  is  hardly  an  intellectual  delight.  The  lapse  of 
all  the  ''  literary  elect "  in  the  world  could  not  dignify 
unreality;  and  their  jjresent  mood,  if  it  exists,  is  of 
no  more  weight  against  that  beauty  in  literature  which 
comes  from  truth  alone,  and  never  can  come  from  any- 
thing else,  than  the  permanent  state  of  the  "  unthink- 
ing multitude." 

Yet  even  as  regards  the  "  unthinking  multitude,"  I 
believe  I  am  not  able  to  take  the  attitude  of  the  writer 
I  have  quoted.     I  am  afraid  that  I  respect  them  more 

248 


CKITICISM   AND   FICTION 

tlian  be  would  like  to  have  me,  though  I  cannot  al- 
ways respect  their  taste,  any  more  than  that  of  the 
"  literary  elect."  I  respect  tliem  for  their  good  sense 
in  most  practical  matters;  for  their  laborious,  honest 
lives ;  for  their  kindness,  their  good  -  will ;  for  that 
aspiration  towards  something  better  than  themselves 
which  seems  to  stir,  however  dumbly,  in  every  human 
breast  not  abandoned  to  literary  pride  or  other  forms 
of  self -righteousness.  I  find  every  man  interesting, 
whether  he  thinks  or  unthinks,  whether  he  is  savage 
or  civilized ;  for  this  reason  I  cannot  thank  the  novel- 
ist who  teaches  us  not  to  know  but  to  unknow  our 
kind.  Yet  I  should  by  no  means  hold  him  to  such 
strict  account  as  Emerson,  who  felt  the  absence  of  the 
best  motive,  even  in  the  greatest  of  the  masters,  when 
he  said  of  Shakespeare  that,  after  all,  he  was  only 
master  of  the  revels.  The  judgment  is  so  severe, 
even  with  the  praise  which  precedes  it,  that  one  winces 
under  it ;  and  if  one  is  still  young,  with  the  world  gay 
before  him,  and  life  full  of  joyous  promise,  one  is  apt 
to  ask,  defiantly.  Well,  what  is  better  than  being  such 
a  master  of  the  revels  as  Shakespeare  was?  Let  each 
judge  for  himself.  To  the  heart  again  of  serious 
youth,  uncontaminate  and  exigent  of  ideal  good,  it 
must  always  be  a  grief  that  the  great  masters  seem  so 
often  to  have  been  willing  to  amuse  the  leisure  and 
vacancy  of  meaner  men,  and  leave  their  mission  to 
the  soul  but  partially  fulfilled.  This,  perhaps,  was 
what  Emerson  had  in  mind ;  and  if  he  had  it  in  mind 
of  Shakespeare,  who  gave  us,  with  his  histories  and 
comedies  and  problems,  such  a  searching  homily  as 
"  Macbeth,"  one  feels  that  he  scarcely  recognized  the 
limitations  of  the  dramatist's  art.  Few  consciences, 
at  times,  seem  so  enlightened  as  that  of  this  person- 
ally unknown  person,  so  withdrawn  into  his  work,  and 

249. 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

so  lost  to  tlie  intensest  curiosity  of  after-time ;  at  other 
times  he  socms  merely  Elizabethan  in  his  coarseness, 
his  courtliness,  his  imperfect  sympathy. 


XX 

Of  the  finer  kinds  of  romance,  as  distinguished 
from  the  novel,  I  would  even  encourage  the  writing, 
though  it  is  one  of  the  hard  conditions  of  romance 
that  its  personages  starting  with  a  parti  pris  can 
rarely  be  characters  with  a  living  growth,  but  are  apt 
to  be  types,  limited  to  the  expression  of  one  principle, 
simple,  elemental,  lacking  the  God  -  given  complexity 
of  motive  which  we  find  in  all  the  human  beings  we 
know. 

Hawthorne,  the  great  master  of  the  romance,  had 
the  insight  and  the  power  to  create  it  anew  as  a  kind  in 
fiction;  though  I  am  not  sure  that  The  Scarlet  Letter 
and  the  Blithedale  Romance  are  not,  strictly  speak- 
ing, novels  rather  than  romances.  They  do  not  play 
with  some  old  superstition  long  outgrown,  and  they  do 
not  invent  a  new  superstition  to  play  with,  but  deal 
with  things  vital  in  every  one's  pulse.  I  am  not  say- 
ing that  what  may  be  called  the  fantastic  romance — 
the  romance  that  descends  from  Franhenstein  rather 
than  The  Scar-let  Letter  —  ought  not  to  be.  On  the 
contrary,  I  should  grieve  to  lose  it,  as  I  should  grieve  to 
lose  the  pantomime  or  the  comic  opera,  or  many  other 
graceful  things  that  amuse  the  passing  hour,  and  help 
us  to  live  agreeably  in  a  world  where  men  actually 
sin,  suffer,  and  die.  But  it  belongs  to  the  decorative 
arts,  and  though  it  has  a  high  place  among  them,  it 
cannot  be  ranked  with  the  works  of  tlM3  imagination — 

250 


CEITICISM  AND   FICTION 

the  works  that  represent  and  body  forth  hunian  ex- 
perience. Its  ingenuity  can  always  afford  a  refined 
pleasure,  and  it  can  often,  at  some  risk  to  itself,  con- 
vey a  valuable  truth. 

Perhaps  the  wliole  region  of  historical  romance 
might  be  reopened  with  advantage  to  readers  and 
writers  who  cannot  bear  to  be  brought  face  to  face 
with  human  nature,  but  require  the  haze  of  distance 
or  a  far  perspective,  in  wliich  all  the  disagreeable  de- 
tails shall  be  lost.  There  is  no  good  reason  why  these 
harmless  people  should  not  be  amused,  or  their  little 
preferences  indulged. 

But  here,  again,  I  have  my  modest  doubts,  some 
recent  instances  are  so  fatuous,  as  far  as  the  por- 
trayal of  character  goes,  though  I  find  them  admirably 
contrived  in  some  respects.  When  I  have  owned  the 
excellence  of  the  staging  in  every  respect,  and  the 
conscience  with  which  the  carpenter  (as  the  theatrical 
folks  say)  has  done  his  work,  I  am  at  the  end  of  my 
praises.  The  people  affect  me  like  persons  of  our 
generation  made  up  for  the  parts;  well  trained,  well 
costumed,  but  actors,  and  almost  amateurs.  They 
have  the  quality  that  makes  the  histrionics  of  amateurs 
endurable;  they  are  ladies  and  gentlemen;  the  worst, 
the  wickedest  of  them,  is  a  lady  or  gentleman  behind 
the  scene. 

Yet,  no  doubt  it  is  well  that  there  should  be  a  re- 
version to  the  earlier  types  of  thinking  and  feeling,  to 
earlier  ways  of  looking  at  human  nature,  and  I  will 
not  altogether  refuse  the  pleasure  offered  me  by  the 
poetic  romancer  or  the  historical  romancer  because  I 
find  my  pleasure  chiefly  in  Tolstoy  and  Valdes  and 
Thomas  Hardy  and  Tourguenief,  and  Balzac  at  his 
best. 

251 


CEITICISM   AXD   FICTION 

XXI 

It  used  to  be  one  of  the  disadvantages  of  the  prao- 
tice  of  romance  in  America,  which  Hawthorne  more 
or  less  whimsically  lamented,  that  there  were  so  few 
shadows  and  inequalities  in  our  broad  level  of  pros- 
perity; and  it  is  one  of  the  reflections  suggested  by 
Dostoievsky's  novel,  The  Crime  and  the  Punishment, 
that  whoever  struck  a  note  so  profoundly  tragic  in 
American  fiction  would  do  a  false  and  mistaken  thing 
— as  false  and  as  mistaken  in  its  way  as  dealing  in 
American  fiction  with  certain  nudities  which  the  Latin 
peoples  seem  to  find  edifying.  Whatever  their  deserts, 
very  few  American  novelists  have  been  led  out  to  be 
shot,  or  finally  exiled  to  the  rigors  of  a  winter  at 
Duluth;  and  in  a  land  where  journeymen  carpenters 
and  plumbers  strike  for  four  dollars  a  day  the  sum  of 
hunger  and  cold  is  comparatively  small,  and  the 
wrong  from  class  to  class  has  been  almost  inappreci- 
able, though  all  this  is  changing  for  the  worse.  Our 
novelists,  therefore,  concern  themselves  with  the  more 
smiling  aspects  of  life,  which  are  the  more  American, 
and  seek  the  universal  in  the  individual  rather  than 
the  social  interests.  It  is  worth  while,  even  at  the  risk 
of  being  called  commonplace,  to  be  true  to  our  well-to- 
do  actualities;  the  very  passions  themselves  seem  to 
be  softened  and  modified  by  conditions  which  formerly 
at  least  could  not  be  said  to  wrong  any  one,  to  cramp 
endeavor,  or  to  cross  lawful  desire.  Sin  and  sufPering 
and  shame  there  must  always  be  in  the  world,  I  sup- 
pose, but  I  believe  that  in  this  new  world  of  ours  it  is 
still  mainly  from  one  to  another  one,  and  oftener  still 
from  one  to  one's  self.  We  have  death,  too,  in  Amer- 
ica, and  a  great  deal  of  disagreeable  and  painful  dis- 
ease, which  the  multiplicity  of  our  patent  medicines 

252 


CEITICISM   AND   FICTION 

does  not  seem  to  cure;  but  this  is  tragedy  that  comes 
in  the  very  nature  of  things,  and  is  not  peculiarly 
American,  as  the  large,  cheerful  average  of  health  and 
success  and  happy  life  is.  It  will  not  do  to  boast,  but 
it  is  well  to  be  true  to  the  facts,  and  to  see  that,  apart 
from  these  purely  mortal  troubles,  the  race  here  has 
enjoyed  conditions  in  which  most  of  the  ills  that  have 
darkened  its  annals  might  be  averted  by  honest  work 
and  unselfish  behavior. 

Fine  artists  we  have  among  us,  and  right-minded  as 
far  as  they  go ;  and  we  must  not  forget  this  at  evil  mo- 
ments when  it  seems  as  if  all  the  women  had  taken  to 
writing  hysterical  improprieties,  and  some  of  the  men 
were  trying  to  be  at  least  as  hysterical  in  despair  of 
being  as  improper.  Other  traits  are  much  more 
characteristic  of  our  life  and  our  fiction.  In  most 
American  novels,  vivid  and  graphic  as  the  best  of  them 
are,  the  people  are  segregated  if  not  sequestered,  and 
the  scene  is  sparsely  populated.  The  effect  may  be  in 
instinctive  response  to  the  vacancy  of  our  social  life, 
and  I  shall  not  make  haste  to  blame  it.  There  are 
few  places,  few  occasions  among  us,  in  which  a  novel- 
ist can  get  a  large  number  of  polite  people  together,  or 
at  least  keep  them  together.  Unless  he  carries  a  snap- 
camera  his  picture  of  them  has  no  probability;  they 
affect  one  like  the  figures  perfunctorily  associated  in 
such  deadly  old  engravings  as  that  of  "  Washington 
Irving  and  his  Friends."  Perhaps  it  is  for  this 
reason  that  we  excel  in  small  pieces  with  three  or  four 
figures,  or  in  studies  of  rustic  communities,  where  there 
is  propinquity  if  not  society.  Our  grasp  of  more 
urbane  life  is  feeble;  most  attempts  to  assemble  it  in 
our  pictures  are  failurcs,  possibly  because  it  is  too 
transitory,  too  intangible  in  its  nature  with  us,  to  be 
truthfully  represented  as  really  existent. 

17  2r>;3  ' 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

I  am  not  sure  that  the  Americans  have  not  brought 
the  short  story  nearer  perfection  in  the  all-round  sense 
that  almost  any  other  people,  and  for  reasons  very 
simple  and  near  at  hand.  It  might  be  argued  from  the 
national  hurry  and  impatience  that  it  was  a  literary 
form  peculiarly  adapted  to  the  American  tempera- 
ment, but  I  suspect  that  its  extraordinary  development 
among  us  is  owing  much  more  to  more  tangible  facts. 
The  success  of  American  magazines,  which  is  nothing 
less  than  prodigious,  is  only  commensurate  with  their 
excellence.  Their  sort  of  success  is  not  only  from  the 
courage  to  decide  which  ought  to  please,  but  from  the 
knowledge  of  what  does  please ;  and  it  is  probable  that, 
aside  from  the  pictures,  it  is  the  short  stories  which 
please  the  readers  of  our  best  magazines.  The  serial 
novels  they  must  have,  of  course;  but  rather  more  of 
course  they  must  have  short  stories,  and  by  operation 
of  the  law  of  supply  and  demand,  the  short  stories, 
abundant  in  quantity  and  excellent  in  quality,  are 
forthcoming  because  they  are  wanted.  By  another 
operation  of  the  same  law,  which  political  economists 
have  more  recently  taken  account  of,  the  demand  fol- 
lows the  supply,  and  short  stories  are  sought  for  be- 
cause there  is  a  proven  ability  to  furnish  them,  and 
people  read  them  willingly  because  they  are  usually 
very  good.  The  art  of  vsrriting  them  is  now  so  disci- 
plined and  diffused  with  us  that  there  is  no  lack  either 
for  the  magazines  or  for  the  newspaper  "  syndicates  " 
which  deal  in  them  almost  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
serials. 

An  interesting  fact  in  regard  to  the  different  varie- 
ties of  the  short  story  among  us  is  that  the  sketches 
and  studies  by  the  women  seem  faithfuller  and  more 
realistic  than  those  of  the  men,  in  proportion  to  their 
number.     Their  tendency  is  more  distinctly  in  that 

254 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

direction,  and  there  is  a  solidity,  an  honest  observa- 
tion, in  the  work  of  snch  women,  which  often  leaves 
little  to  be  desired.  I  should,  upon  the  whole,  be  dis- 
posed to  rank  American  short  stories  only  below  those 
of  such  Russian  writers  as  I  have  read,  and  I  should 
praise  rather  than  blame  their  free  use  of  our  different 
local  parlances,  or  "  dialects,"  as  people  call  them.  I 
like  this  because  I  hope  that  our  inherited  English 
may  be  constantly  freshened  and  revived  from  the  na- 
tive sources  which  our  literary  decentralization  will 
help  to  keep  open,  and  I  will  own  that  as  I  turn  over 
novels  coming  from  Philadelphia,  from  N^ew  Mexico, 
from  Boston,  from  Tennessee,  from  rural  ISTew  Eng- 
land, from  ISTew  York,  every  local  flavor  of  diction 
gives  me  courage  and  pleasure.  Alphonse  Daudet,  in 
a  conversation  with  H.  H.  Boyesen  said,  speaking  of 
Tourguenief,  "  What  a  luxury  it  must  be  to  have  a 
great  big  untrodden  barbaric  language  to  wade  into ! 
We  poor  fellows  who  work  in  the  language  of  an  old 
civilization,  we  may  sit  and  chisel  our  little  verbal 
felicities,  only  to  find  in  the  end  that  it  is  a  borrowed 
jewel  we  are  polishing.  The  crown  -  jewels  of  our 
French  tongue  have  passed  through  the  hands  of  so 
many  generations  of  monarchs  that  it  seems  like  pre- 
sumption on  the  part  of  any  late-born  pretender  to  at- 
tempt to  wear  them." 

This  grief  is,  of  course,  a  little  whimsical,  yet  it  has 
a  certain  measure  of  reason  in  it,  and  the  same  regret 
has  been  more  seriously  expressed  by  the  Italian  poet 
Aleardi : 

"  Muse  of  an  aged  people,  in  the  eve 
Of   fading   civilization,   I   was   born. 

Oh,  fortunate. 

My  sisters,  who  in  the  heroic  dawn 
Of  races  sung!     To  them  did  destiny  give 
255 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

The  virg:in  fire  and  chaste  ingenuousness 

Of  their  land's  speech;  and,  reverenced,  their  hands 

Ran  over  potent  strings." 


It  will  never  do  to  allow  that  we  are  at  such  a  des- 
perate pass  in  English,  but  something  of  this  divine 
despair  we  may  feel  too  in  thinking  of  "  tlie  spacious 
times  of  great  Elizabeth,"  when  the  poets  were  trying 
the  stops  of  the  young  language,  and  thrilling  with 
the  surprises  of  their  own  music.  We  may  comfort 
ourselves,  however,  unless  we  prefer  a  luxury  of  grief, 
by  remembering  that  no  language  is  ever  old  on  the 
lips  of  those  who  speak  it,  no  matter  how  decrepit  it 
droj)s  from  the  pen.  We  have  only  to  leave  our 
studies,  editorial  and  other,  and  go  into  the  shops  and 
fields  to  find  the  "  spacious  times  "  again ;  and  from 
the  beginning  Realism,  before  she  had  put  on  her 
capital  letter,  had  divined  this  near  -  at  -  hand  truth 
along  with  the  rest.  Lowell,  almost  the  greatest  and 
finest  realist  who  ever  wrought  in  verse,  showed  us 
that  Elizabeth  was  still  Queen  where  he  heard  Yankee 
farmers  talk.  One  need  not  invite  slang  into  the  com- 
pany of  its  betters,  though  perhaps  slang  has  been 
dropping  its  "  s  "  and  becoming  language  ever  since 
the  world  began,  and  is  certainly  sometimes  delight- 
ful and  forcible  beyond  the  reach  of  the  dictionary.  I 
would  not  have  any  one  go  about  for  new  words,  but  if 
one  of  them  came  aptly,  not  to  reject  its  help.  For  our 
novelists  to  try  to  write  Americanly,  from  any  motive, 
would  be  a  dismal  error,  but  being  born  Americans,  I 
would  have  them  use  "  Americanisms "  whenever 
th'^se  serve  their  turn ;  and  when  their  characters 
speak,  I  should  like  to  hear  them  speak  true  Amer- 
ican, with  all  tlie  varying  Tennesseean,  Philadelphian, 
Bostonian,  and  New  York  accents.     If  avc  bother  our- 

256 


CEITICISM   AND   FICTION 

selves  to  write  what  the  critics  imagine  to  be  "  Eng- 
lish," we  shall  be  priggish  and  artificial,  and  still 
more  so  if  we  make  onr  Americans  talk  "  English." 
There  is  also  this  serious  disadvantage  about  "  Eng- 
lish," that  if  we  wrote  the  best  "  English "  in  the 
world,  probably  the  Englisli  themselves  would  not 
know  it,  or,  if  they  did,  certainly  would  not  own  it. 
It  has  always  been  supposed  by  grammarians  and 
purists  that  a  language  can  be  kept  as  they  find  it; 
but  languages,  while  they  live,  are  perpetually  chang- 
ing. God  apparently  meant  them  for  the  common 
people ;  and  the  common  people  will  use  them  freely 
as  they  use  other  gifts  of  God.  On  their  lips  our 
continental  English  will  differ  more  and  more  from 
the  insular  English,  and  I  believe  that  this  is  not  de- 
plorable, but  desirable. 

In  fine,  I  would  have  our  American  novelists  be  as 
American  as  they  miconsciously  can.  Matthew  Ar- 
nold complained  that  he  found  no  "  distinction "  in 
our  life,  and  I  would  gladly  persuade  all  artists  intend- 
ing greatness  in  any  kind  among  us  that  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  fact  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Arnold  ought  to 
be  a  source  of  inspiration  to  them,  and  not  discourage- 
ment. We  have  been  now  some  hundred  years  building 
up  a  state  on  the  affirmation  of  the  essential  equality 
of  men  in  their  rights  and  duties,  and  whetlier  we  have 
been  right  or  been  wrong  the  gods  have  taken  us  at  our 
word,  and  have  responded  to  us  with  a  civilization  in 
which  there  is  no  "  distinction  "  perceptible  to  the  eye 
that  loves  and  values  it.  Such  beauty  and  such  grand- 
eur as  we  have  is  common  beauty,  common  grandeur, 
or  the  beauty  and  grandeur  in  which  the  quality  of 
solidarity  so  prevails  that  neither  distinguishes  itself 
to  the  disadvantage  of  an}i;hing  else.  It  seems  to  me 
that   these   conditions   invite  the   artist   to   the   study 

257 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

and  the  appreciation  of  the  common,  and  to  the  por- 
trayal in  every  art  of  those  finer  and  higher  aspects 
which  unite  rather  than  sever  humanity,  if  he  would 
thrive  in  our  new  order  of  things.  The  talent  that  is 
robust  enough  to  front  the  every-day  world  and  catch 
the  charm  of  its  work-worn,  care-worn,  brave,  kindly 
face,  need  not  fear  the  encounter,  though  it  seems  ter- 
rible to  the  sort  nurtured  in  the  superstition  of  the 
romantic,  the  bizarre,  the  heroic,  the  distinguished,  as 
the  things  alone  worthy  of  painting  or  carving  or  writ- 
ing. The  arts  must  become  democratic,  and  then  we 
shall  have  the  expression  of  America  in  art;  and  the 
reproach  which  Arnold  was  half  right  in  making  us 
shall  have  no  justice  in  it  any  longer;  we  shall  be 
"  distinguished." 

XXII 

In  the  mean  time  it  has  been  said  with  a  superficial 
justice  that  our  fiction  is  narrow;  though  in  the  same 
sense  I  suppose  the  present  English  fiction  is  as  narrow 
as  our  own ;  and  most  modern  fiction  is  narrow  in  a 
certain  sense.  In  Italy  the  best  men  are  writing 
novels  as  brief  and  restricted  in  range  as  ours ;  in 
Spain  the  novels  are  intense  and  deep,  and  not 
spacious ;  the  Trench  school,  with  the  exception  of 
Zola,  is  narrow;  the  IN'orwegians  are  narrow;  the  Rus- 
sians, except  Tolstoy,  are  narrow,  and  the  next  great- 
est after  him,  Tourguenief,  is  the  narrowest  great 
novelist,  as  to  mere  dimensions,  that  ever  lived,  deal- 
ing nearly  always  with  small  groups,  isolated  and 
analyzed  in  the  most  American  fashion.  In  fact,  the 
charge  of  narrowness  accuses  the  whole  tendency  of 
modern  fiction  as  much  as  the  American  school.  But 
I  do  not  by  any  means  allow  that  this  narrowness  is  a 

258 


CEITICISM   AND   FICTION 

defect,  while  denying  that  it  is  a  universal  characteris- 
tic of  our  fiction ;  it  is  rather,  for  the  present,  a  virtue. 
Indeed,  I  should  call  the  present  American  work, 
Korth  and  South,  thorough  rather  than  narrow.  In  one 
sense  it  is  as  broad  as  life,  for  each  man  is  a  microcosm, 
and  the  writer  who  is  able  to  acquaint  us  intimately 
with  half  a  dozen  people,  or  the  conditions  of  a  neigh- 
borhood or  a  class,  has  done  something  which  cannot 
in  any  bad  sense  be  called  narrow;  his  breadth  is 
vertical  instead  of  lateral,  that  is  all ;  and  this  depth  is 
more  desirable  than  horizontal  expansion  in  a  civiliza- 
tion like  ours,  Avhere  the  differences  arc  not  of  classes, 
but  of  types,  and  not  of  types  either  so  much  as  of 
characters.  A  new  method  was  necessary  in  dealing 
with  the  new  conditions,  and  the  new  method  is  world- 
wide, because  the  whole  world  is  more  or  less  Amer- 
icanized. Tolstoy  is  exceptionally  voluminous  among 
modern  writers,  even  Russian  writers;  and  it  might 
be  said  that  the  forte  of  Tolstoy  himself  is  not  in  his 
breadth  sidewise,  but  in  his  breadth  upward  and  down- 
ward. The  Death  of  Ivan  Ilyiich  leaves  as  vast  an  im- 
pression on  the  reader's  soul  as  any  episode  of  War 
and  Peace,  which,  indeed,  can  be  recalled  only  in 
episodes,  and  not  as  a  whole.  I  think  tiiat  our  writers 
may  be  safely  counselled  to  continue  their  work  in  the 
modern  way,  because  it  is  the  best  way  yet  known.  If 
they  make  it  true,  it  will  be  large,  no  matter  what  its 
superficies  are;  and  it  would  be  the  greatest  mistake 
to  try  to  make  it  big.  A  big  book  is  necessarily  a  group 
of  episodes  more  or  less  loosely  connected  by  a  thread 
of  narrative,  and  there  seems  no  reason  why  this 
thread  must  always  be  supplied.  Each  episode  may 
be  quite  distinct,  or  it  may  be  one  of  a  connected 
group ;  the  final  effect  will  be  from  the  truth  of  each 
episode,  not  from  the  size  of  the  group. 

259 


crtticis:m  axd  fiction 

The  whole  field  of  human  experience  was  never  so 
nearly  covered  by  imaginative  literature  in  any  age  as 
in  this;  and  American  life  especially  is  getting  repre- 
sented with  unexampled  fulness.  It  is  true  that  no 
one  writer,  no  one  book,  represents  it,  for  that  is  not 
possible;  our  social  and  political  decentralization  for- 
bids this,  and  may  forever  forbid  it.  But  a  great  num- 
ber of  very  good  writers  are  instinctively  striving  to 
make  each  part  of  the  country  and  each  phase  of  our 
civilization  known  to  all  the  other  parts;  and  their 
work  is  not  narrow  in  any  feeble  or  vicious  sense. 
The  world  was  once  very  little,  and  it  is  now  very 
large.  Formerly,  all  science  could  be  grasped  by  a 
single  mind;  but  now  the  man  who  hopes  to  become 
great  or  useful  in  science  must  devote  himself  to  a 
single  dej)artment.  It  is  so  in  everything — all  arts, 
all  trades;  and  the  novelist  is  not  superior  to  the  uni- 
versal rule  against  universality.  He  contributes  his 
share  to  a  thorough  knowledge  of  groups  of  the  human 
race  under  conditions  which  are  full  of  inspiring 
novelty  and  interest.  He  works  more  fearlessly, 
frankly,  and  faithfully  than  the  novelist  ever  worked 
before ;  his  work,  or  much  of  it,  may  be  destined  never 
to  be  reprinted  from  the  monthly  magazines ;  but  if  he 
turns  to  his  book-shelf  and  regards  the  array  of  the 
British  or  otlier  classics,  he  knows  that  they,  too,  are 
for  the  most  part  dead ;  he  knows  that  the  planet  itself 
is  destined  to  freeze  up  and  drop  into  the  sun  at  last, 
with  all  its  surviving  literature  upon  it.  The  question 
is  merely  one  of  time.  He  consoles  himself,  therefore, 
if  he  is  wise,  and  works  on ;  and  we  may  all  take  some 
comfort  from  the  thought  that  most  things  cannot  be 
helped.  Especially  a  movement  in  literature  like  that 
which  the  world  is  now  witnessing  cannot  be  helped ; 
and  we  could  no  more  turn  back  and  be  of  the  literary 

2G0 


CKITICISM   AND   FICTION 

fashions  of  any  age  before  this  than  we  could  turn 
back  and  be  of  its  social,  economical,  or  political  con- 
ditions. 

If  I  were  authorized  to  address  any  word  directly  to 
our  novelists  I  should  say,  Do  not  trouble  yourselves 
about  standards  or  ideals;  but  try  to  be  faithful  and 
natural:  remember  that  there  is  no  greatness,  no 
beauty,  which  does  not  come  from  truth  to  your  own 
knowledge  of  things ;  and  keep  on  working,  even  if  your 
work  is  not  long  remembered. 

At  least  three-fifths  of  the  literature  called  classic, 
in  all  languages,  no  more  lives  than  the  poems  and 
stories  that  perish  monthly  in  our  magazines.  It  is 
all  printed  and  reprinted,  generation  after  generation, 
century  after  century ;  but  it  is  not  alive ;  it  is  as  dead 
as  the  people  who  wrote  it  and  read  it,  and  to  whom  it 
meant  something,  perhaps;  with  whom  it  was  a  fash- 
ion, a  caprice,  a  passing  taste.  A  superstitious  piety 
preserves  it,  and  pretends  that  it  has  aesthetic  quali- 
ties which  can  delight  or  edify;  but  nobody  really  en- 
joys it,  except  as  a  reflection  of  the  past  moods  and 
humors  of  the  race,  or  a  revelation  of  the  author's 
character;  otherwise  it  is  trash,  and  often  very  filthy 
trash,  which  the  present  trash  generally  is  not. 


XXIII 

One  of  the  great  newspapers  the  other  day  invited 
the  prominent  American  authors  to  speak  their  minds 
upon  a  point  in  the  theory  and  practice  of  fiction  which 
had  already  vexed  some  of  them.  It  was  the  question 
of  how  much  or  how  little  the  American  novel  ought  to 
deal  with  certain  facts  of  life  which  are  not  usually 
talked  of  before  young  people,  and  especially  young 

261 


CRITICIGM  AND   FICTION 

ladies.  Of  course  the  question  was  not  decided,  and  I 
forget  just  how  far  the  balance  inclined  in  favor  of  a 
larger  freedom  in  the  matter.  But  it  certainly  in- 
clined that  way ;  one  or  two  writers  of  the  sex  which  is 
somehow  supposed  to  have  purity  in  its  keeping  (as  if 
purity  were  a  thing  that  did  not  practically  concern 
the  other  sex,  preoccupied  with  serious  affairs)  gave  it 
a  rather  vigorous  tilt  to  that  side.  In  view  of  this 
fact  it  would  not  be  the  part  of  prudence  to  make 
an  effort  to  dress  the  balance;  and  indeed  I  do  not 
know  that  I  was  going  to  make  any  such  effort.  But 
there  are  some  things  to  say,  around  and  about  the 
subject,  which  I  should  like  to  have  some  one  else 
say,  and  which  I  may  myself  possibly  be  safe  in  sug- 
gesting. 

One  of  the  first  of  these  is  the  fact,  generally  lost 
sight  of  by  those  who  censure  the  Anglo-Saxon  novel  for 
its  prudishness,  that  it  is  really  not  such  a  prude  after 
all;  and  that  if  it  is  sometimes  apparently  anxious  to 
avoid  those  experiences  of  life  not  spoken  of  before 
young  people,  this  may  be  an  appearance  only.  Some- 
times a  novel  which  has  this  shuffling  air,  this  effect  of 
truckling  to  propriety,  might  defend  itself,  if  it  could 
speak  for  itself,  by  saying  that  such  experiences  hap- 
pened not  to  come  within  its  scheme,  and  that,  so  far 
from  maiming  or  mutilating  itself  in  ignoring  them, 
it  was  all  the  more  faithfully  representative  of  the 
tone  of  modern  life  in  dealing  with  love  that  was 
chaste,  and  with  passion  so  honest  that  it  could  be 
openly  spoken  of  before  the  tenderest  society  bud  at 
dinner.  It  might  say  that  the  guilty  intrigue,  the  be- 
trayal, the  extreme  flirtation  even,  was  the  exceptional 
thing  in  life,  and  unless  the  scheme  of  the  story  neces- 
sarily involved  it,  that  it  would  be  bad  art  to  lug  it  in, 
and  as  bad  taste  as  to  introduce  such  topics  in  a  mixed 

262 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

company.  It  could  say  very  justly  that  the  novel  in 
our  civilization  now  always  addresses  a  mixed  com- 
pany, and  that  the  vast  majority  of  the  company  are 
ladies,  and  that  very  many,  if  not  most,  of  these  ladies 
are  young  girls.  If  the  novel  were  \vritten  for  men 
and  for  married  women  alone,  as  in  continental  Eu- 
rope, it  might  be  altogether  different.  But  the  simple 
fact  is  that  it  is  not  written  for  them  alone  among  us, 
and  it  is  a  question  of  writing,  under  cover  of  our  uni- 
versal acceptance,  things  for  young  girls  to  read  which 
you  "would  be  put  out-of-doors  for  saying  to  them,  or  of 
frankly  giving  notice  of  your  intention,  and  so  cutting 
yourself  off  from  the  pleasure — and  it  is  a  very  high 
and  sweet  one — of  appealing  to  these  vivid,  responsive 
intelligences,  which  are  none  the  less  brilliant  and  ad- 
mirable because  they  are  innocent. 

One  day  a  novelist  who  liked,  after  the  manner  of 
other  men,  to  repine  at  his  hard  fate,  complained  to  his 
friend,  a  critic,  that  he  was  tired  of  the  restriction  he 
had  put  upon  himself  in  this  regard;  for  it  is  a  mis- 
take, as  can  be  readily  shown,  to  suppose  that  others 
impose  it.  "  See  how  free  those  French  fellows  are !" 
he  rebelled.  "  Shall  we  always  be  shut  up  to  our  tradi- 
tion of  decency?" 

"  Do  you  think  it's  much  worse  than  being  shut  up 
to  their  tradition  of  indecency  ?"  said  his  friend. 

Then  that  novelist  began  to  reflect,  and  he  remem- 
bered how  sick  the  invariable  motive  of  the  French 
novel  made  him.  He  perceived  finally  that,  convention 
for  convention,  ours  was  not  only  more  tolerable,  but 
on  the  whole  was  truer  to  life,  not  only  to  its  com- 
plexion, but  also  to  its  texture.  'Ko  one  will  pretend 
that  there  is  not  vicious  love  beneath  the  surface  of 
our  society;  if  he  did,  the  fetid  explosions  of  the  di- 
vorce trials  would  refute  him ;   but  if  he  pretended 

263 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

that  it  was  in  any  just  sense  characteristic  of  our  soci- 
ety, he  could  be  still  more  easily  refuted.  Yet  it  exists, 
and  it  is  unquestionably  the  material  of  tragedy,  the 
stuff  from  which  intense  effects  are  wrought.  The 
question,  after  owning  this  fact,  is  whether  these  in- 
tense effects  are  not  rather  cheap  effects.  I  incline 
to  think  they  are,  and  I  will  try  to  say  why  I  think 
so,  if  I  may  do  so  without  offence.  The  material  itself, 
the  mere  mention  of  it,  has  an  instant  fascination;  it 
arrests,  it  detains,  till  the  last  word  is  said,  and  while 
there  is  anything  to  be  hinted.  This  is  what  makes  a 
love  intrigue  of  some  sort  all  but  essential  to  the  popu- 
larity of  any  fiction.  Without  such  an  intrigue  the  in- 
tellectual equipment  of  the  author  must  be  of  the  high- 
est, and  then  he  will  succeed  only  with  the  highest  class 
of  readers.  But  any  author  who  will  deal  with  a 
guilty  love  intrigue  holds  all  readers  in  his  hand,  the 
highest  with  the  lowest,  as  long  as  he  hints  the  slight- 
est hope  of  the  smallest  potential  naughtiness.  He 
need  not  at  all  be  a  great  author;  he  may  be  a  very 
shabby  wretch,  if  he  has  but  the  courage  or  the  trick 
of  that  sort  of  thing.  The  critics  will  call  him  "  virile  " 
and  "  passionate  " ;  decent  people  will  be  ashamed  to 
have  been  limed  by  him ;  but  the  low  average  will 
only  ask  another  chance  of  flocking  into  his  net.  If  he 
happens  to  be  an  able  writer,  his  really  fine  and 
costly  work  will  be  unheeded,  and  the  lure  to  the 
appetite  will  be  chiefly  remembered.  There  may  be 
other  qualities  which  make  reputations  for  other  men, 
but  in  his  case  they  vrill  count  for  nothing.  He  pays 
this  penalty  for  his  success  in  that  kind ;  and  every 
one  pays  some  such  penalty  who  deals  with  some  such 
material. 

But  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  his  case  covers  the 
whole  ground.     So  far  as  it  goes,  though,  it  ought  to 

264 


CKITICISM   AND   FICTION 

stop  tlio  mouths  of  tliose  who  complain  that  fiction  Is 
enslaved  to  propriety  among  us.  It  appears  that  of  a 
certain  kind  of  impropriety  it  is  free  to  give  us  all  it 
will,  and  more.  But  this  is  not  wliat  serious  men  and 
women  writing  fiction  mean  when  they  rebel  against 
the  limitations  of  their  art  in  our  civilization.  They 
have  no  desire  to  deal  with  nakedness,  as  painters  and 
sculptors  freely  do  in  the  worship  of  beauty;  or  with 
certain  facts  of  life,  as  the  stage  does,  in  the  service 
of  sensation.  But  they  ask  why,  when  the  conventions 
of  the  plastic  and  histrionic  arts  liberate  their  fol- 
lowers to  the  portrayal  of  almost  any  phase  of  the 
physical  or  of  the  emotional  nature,  an  American  novel- 
ist may  not  write  a  story  on  the  lines  of  Anna  Kare- 
nina  or  Madame  Bovary.  They  wish  to  touch  one  of 
the  most  serious  and  sorrowful  problems  of  life  in  the 
spirit  of  Tolstoy  and  Flaubert,  and  they  ask  why  they 
may  not.  At  one  time,  they  remind  us,  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  novelist  did  deal  with  such  problems — De  Foe 
in  his  spirit,  Eichardson  in  his,  Goldsmith  in  his.  At 
what  moment  did  our  fiction  lose  this  privilege  ?  In 
what  fatal  hour  did  the  Young  Girl  arise  and  seal  the 
lips  of  Fiction,  with  a  touch  of  her  finger,  to  some  of 
the  most  vital  interests  of  life  ? 

Whether  I  wished  to  oppose  them  in  their  aspira- 
tion for  greater  freedom,  or  whether  I  wished  to  en- 
courage them,  I  should  begin  to  answer  them  by  say- 
ing that  the  Young  Girl  has  never  done  anything  of 
the  kind.  The  manners  of  the  novel  have  been  im- 
proving with  those  of  its  readers ;  that  is  all.  Gentle- 
men no  longer  swear  or  fall  drunk  under  the  table,  or 
abduct  young  ladies  and  shut  them  up  in  lonely  coun- 
try-houses, or  so  habitually  set  about  the  ruin  of  their 
neighbors'  wives,  as  they  once  did.  Generally,  people 
now  call  a  spade  an  agricultural  implement;  thej[  have 

265 


CKITICISM   AND   FICTION 

not  grown  decent  without  having  also  groAvn  a  little 
squeamish,  but  they  have  grown  comparatively  decent ; 
there  is  no  doubt  about  that.  They  require  of  a  novel- 
ist whom  they  respect  unquestionable  proof  of  his 
seriousness,  if  he  proposes  to  deal  with  certain  phases 
of  life;  they  require  a  sort  of  scientific  decorum.  He 
can  no  longer  expect  to  be  received  on  the  ground  of 
entertainment  only;  he  assumes  a  higher  function, 
something  like  that  of  a  physician  or  a  priest,  and  they 
expect  him  to  be  bound  by  laws  as  sacred  as  those  of 
such  professions;  they  hold  him  solemnly  pledged  not 
to  betray  them  or  abuse  their  confidence.  If  he  will 
accept  the  conditions,  they  give  him  their  confidence, 
and  he  may  then  treat  to  his  greater  honor,  and  not  at 
all  to  his  disadvantage,  of  such  experiences,  such  rela- 
tions of  men  and  women  as  George  Eliot  treats  in 
Adam  Bede,  in  Daniel  Deronda,  in  Romola,  in  almost 
all  her  books ;  such  as  Hawthorne  treats  in  The  Scarlet 
Letter;  such  as  Dickens  treats  in  David  Copperfield; 
such  as  Thackeray  treats  in  Pendennis,  and  glances  at 
in  every  one  of  his  fictions ;  such  as  most  of  the  masters 
of  English  fiction  have  at  some  time  treated  more  or 
less  openly.  It  is  quite  false  or  quite  mistaken  to  sup- 
pose that  our  novels  have  left  untouched  these  most 
important  realities  of  life.  They  have  only  not  made 
them  their  stock  in  trade;  they  have  kept  a  true  per- 
spective in  regard  to  them ;  they  have  relegated  them  in 
their  pictures  of  life  to  the  space  and  place  they  occupy 
in  life  itself,  as  we  know  it  in  England  and  America. 
They  have  kept  a  correct  proportion,  knowing  perfectly 
well  that  unless  the  novel  is  to  bo  a  map,  with  every- 
thing scrupulously  laid  down  in  it,  a  faithful  record 
of  life  in  far  the  greater  extent  could  be  made  to  the 
exclusion  of  guilty  love  and  all  its  circumstances  and 
consequences, 

266 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

I  justify  them  in  this  view  not  only  because  I  hate 
what  is  cheap  and  meretricious,  and  hold  in  peculiar 
loathing  the  cant  of  the  critics  who  require  "  passion  " 
as  something  in  itself  admirable  and  desirable  in  a 
novel,  but  because  I  prize  fidelity  in  the  historian  of 
feeling  and  character.  Most  of  these  critics  who  de- 
mand "  passion  "  would  seem  to  have  no  conception  of 
any  passion  but  one.  Yet  there  are  several  other  pas- 
sions: the  passion  of  grief,  the  passion  of  avarice,  the 
passion  of  pity,  the  passion  of  ambition,  the  passion  of 
hate,  the  passion  of  envy,  the  passion  of  devotion,  the 
passion  of  friendship ;  and  all  these  have  a  greater  part 
in  the  drama  of  life  than  the  passion  of  love,  and  in- 
finitely greater  than  the  passion  of  guilty  love.  Wit- 
tingly or  unwittingly,  English  fiction  and  American 
fiction  have  recognized  this  truth,  not  fully,  not  in  the 
measure  it  merits,  but  in  greater  degree  than  most 
other  fiction. 


XXIV 

Who  can  deny  that  fiction  would  be  incomparably 
stronger,  incomparably  truer,  if  once  it  could  tear  off 
the  habit  which  enslaves  it  to  the  celebration  chiefly 
of  a  single  passion,  in  one  phase  or  another,  and  could 
frankly  dedicate  itself  to  the  service  of  all  the  passions, 
all  the  interests,  all  the  facts  ?  Every  novelist  who  has 
thought  about  his  art  knows  that  it  would,  and  I  think 
that  upon  reflection  he  must  doubt  whether  his  sphere 
would  be  greatly  enlarged  if  he  were  allowed  to  treat 
freely  the  darker  aspects  of  the  favorite  passion.  But, 
as  I  have  shown,  the  privilege,  the  right  to  do  this,  is 
already  perfectly  recognized.  This  is  proved  again 
by  the  fact  that  serious  criticism  recognizes  as  mastcr- 

267 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

works  (I  will  not  push  the  question  of  supremacy)  the 
two  great  novels  which  above  all  others  have  moved  the 
world  by  their  study  of  guilty  love.  If  by  any  chance, 
if  by  some  prodigious  miracle,  any  American  should 
now  arise  to  treat  it  on  the  level  of  Anyia  Karenlna  and 
Madame  Bovary,  he  would  be  absolutely  sure  of  suc- 
cess, and  of  fame  and  gratitude  as  great  as  those  books 
have  won  for  their  authors. 

But  what  editor  of  what  American  magazine  would 
print  such  a  story? 

Certainly  I  do  not  think  any  one  would;  and  here 
our  novelist  must  again  submit  to  conditions.  If  he 
wishes  to  publish  such  a  story  (supposing  him  to  have 
once  written  it),  he  must  publish  it  as  a  book.  A  book 
is  something  by  itself,  responsible  for  its  character, 
which  becomes  quickly  known,  and  it  does  not  neces- 
sarily penetrate  to  every  member  of  the  household. 
The  father  or  the  mother  may  say  to  the  child,  "  I 
would  rather  you  wouldn't  read  that  book  " ;  if  the 
child  cannot  be  trusted,  the  book  may  be  locked  up. 
But  with  the  magazine  and  its  serial  the  affair  is  dif- 
ferent. Between  the  editor  of  a  reputable  English  or 
American  magazine  and  the  families  which  receive  it 
there  is  a  tacit  agreement  that  he  will  print  nothing 
which  a  father  may  not  read  to  his  daughter,  or  safely 
leave  her  to  read  herself. 

After  all,  it  is  a  matter  of  business;  and  the  in- 
surgent novelist  should  consider  the  situation  with 
coolness  and  common-sense.  The  editor  did  not  create 
the  situation ;  but  it  exists,  and  he  could  not  even  at- 
tempt to  change  it  without  many  sorts  of  disaster.  He 
respects  it,  therefore,  with  the  good  faith  of  an  honest 
man.  Even  when  he  is  himself  a  novelist,  with  ardor 
for  his  art  and  impatience  of  the  limitations  put  upon 
it,  ho  interposes  his  veto,  as  Thackeray  did  in  the  case 

268 


CRITICISM  AND   MICTION 

of  Trollope  when  a  contributor  approaches  forbidden 
ground. 

It  does  not  avail  to  say  that  the  daily  papers  teem 
with  facts  far  fouler  and  deadlier  than  any  which  fic- 
tion could  iniag-ine.  That  is  true,  but  it  is  true  also 
that  the  sex  which  reads  the  most  novels  reads  the 
fewest  newspapers;  and,  besides,  the  reporter  does  not 
command  the  novelist's  skill  to  fix  impressions  in  a 
young  girl's  mind  or  to  suggest  conjecture.  The  maga- 
zine is  a  little  despotic,  a  little  arbitrary;  but  unques- 
tionably its  favor  is  essential  to  success,  and  its  condi- 
tions are  not  such  narrow  ones.  You  cannot  deal  with 
Tolstoy's  and  Flaubert's  subjects  in  the  absolute  artis- 
tic freedom  of  Tolstoy  and  Flaubert;  since  De  Foe, 
that  is  unknown  among  us ;  but  if  you  deal  with  theroi 
in  the  manner  of  George  Eliot,  of  Thackeray,  of  Dick- 
ens, of  society,  you  may  deal  with  them  even  in  the 
magazines.  There  is  no  other  restriction  upon  you. 
'All  the  horrors  and  miseries  and  tortures  are  open  to 
you ;  your  pages  may  drop  blood ;  sometimes  it  may 
happen  that  the  editor  will  even  exact  such  strong  ma- 
terial from  you.  But  probably  he  will  require  nothing 
but  the  observance  of  the  convention  in  question;  and 
if  you  do  not  yourself  prefer  bloodshed  he  will  leave 
you  free  to  use  all  sweet  and  peaceable  means  of  inter- 
esting his  readers. 

It  is  no  narrow  field  he  throws  open  to  you,  with  that 
little  sign  to  keep  off  the  grass  up  at  one  point  only. 
Its  vastness  is  still  almost  unexplored,  and  whole 
regions  in  it  are  unknown  to  the  fictionist.  Dig  any- 
where, and  do  but  dig  deep  enough,  and  you  strike 
riches ;  or,  if  you  are  of  the  mind  to  range,  the  gentler 
climes,  the  softer  temperatures,  the  serener  skies,  are 
all  free  to  you,  and  are  so  little  visited  that  the  chance 
of  novelty  is  greater  among  them. 
^8  269 


CEITICISM  AND  FICTION 


XXV 

While  the  Americans  have  greatly  excelled  in  the 
short  story  generally,  they  have  almost  created  a  spe- 
cies of  it  in  the  Thanksgiving  story.  We  have  trans- 
planted the  Christmas  story  from  England,  while  the 
Thanksgiving  story  is  native  to  our  air ;  but  both  are  of 
Anglo-Saxon  growth.  Their  difference  is  from  a  differ- 
ence of  environment ;  and  the  Christmas  story  when 
naturalized  among  us  becomes  almost  identical  in  mo- 
tive, incident,  and  treatment  with  the  Thanksgiving 
story.  If  I  were  to  generalize  a  distinction  between 
them,  I  should  say  that  the  one  dealt  more  with  marvels 
and  the  other  more  with  morals;  and  yet  the  critic 
should  beware  of  speaking  too  confidently  on  this 
point.  It  is  certain,  however,  that  the  Christmas 
season  is  meteorologically  more  favorable  to  the  effec- 
tive return  of  persons  long  supposed  lost  at  sea,  or 
from  a  prodigal  life,  or  from  a  darkened  mind.  The 
longer,  darker,  and  colder  nights  are  better  adapted  to 
the  apparition  of  ghosts,  and  to  all  manner  of  signs 
and  portents ;  while  they  seem  to  present  a  wider  field 
for  the  intervention  of  angels  in  behalf  of  orphans  and 
outcasts.  The  dreams  of  elderly  sleepers  at  this  time 
are  apt  to  be  such  as  will  effect  a  lasting  change  in 
them  when  they  awake,  turning  them  from  the  hard, 
cruel,  and  grasping  habits  of  a  lifetime,  and  recon- 
ciling them  to  their  sons,  daughters,  and  nephews,  who 
have  thwarted  them  in  marriage ;  or  softening  them 
to  their  meek,  uncomplaining  wives,  whose  hearts  they 
have  trampled  upon  in  their  reckless  pursuit  of  wealth ; 
and  generally  disposing  them  to  a  distribution  of  ham- 
pers among  the  sick  and  poor,  and  to  a  friendly  recep- 
tion  of  gentlemen  with  charity   subscription   papers. 

270 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

Ships  readily  drive  upon  rocks  in  the  early  twilight, 
and  offer  exciting'  difficulties  of  salvage;  and  the  heavy 
snows  gather  quickly  round  the  steps  of  wanderers  who 
lie  down  to  die  in  them,  preparatory  to  their  discovery 
and  rescue  by  immediate  relatives.  The  midnight 
weather  is  also  very  suitable  for  encounter  with  mur- 
derers and  burglars;  and  the  contrast  of  its  freezing 
gloom  with  the  light  and  cheer  in-doors  promotes  the 
gayeties  which  merge,  at  all  well-regulated  country- 
houses,  in  love  and  marriage.  In  the  region  of  pure 
character  no  moment  could  be  so  available  for  flinging 
off  the  mask  of  frivolity,  or  imbecility,  or  savagery, 
which  one  has  worn  for  ten  or  twenty  long  years,  say, 
for  the  purpose  of  foiling  some  villain,  and  surprising 
the  reader,  and  helping  the  author  out  with  his  plot. 
Persons  abroad  in  the  Alps,  or  Apennines,  or  Pyre- 
nees, or  anywhere  seeking  shelter  in  the  huts  of  shep- 
herds or  the  dens  of  smugglers,  find  no  time  like  it  for 
lying  in  a  feigned  slumber,  and  listening  to  the  whis- 
pered machinations  of  their  suspicious  -  looking  enter- 
tainers, and  then  suddenly  starting  up  and  fighting 
their  way  out ;  or  else  springing  from  the  real  sleep 
into  which  they  have  sunk  exhausted,  and  finding  it 
broad  day  and  the  good  peasants  whom  they  had  so  un- 
justly doubted,  waiting  breakfast  for  them. 

We  need  not  point  out  the  superior  advantages 
of  the  Christmas  season  for  anything  one  has  a 
mind  to  do  with  the  French  Revolution,  of  the 
Arctic  explorations,  or  the  Indian  Mutiny,  or  the 
horrors  of  Siberian  exile ;  there  is  no  time  so  good 
for  the  use  of  this  material ;  and  ghosts  on  shipboard 
are  notoriously  fond  of  Christmas  Eve.  In  our  o^^^l 
logging  camps  the  man  who  has  gone  into  the  woods 
for  the  winter,  after  quarrelling  with  his  wife,  then 
hears  her  sad  appealing  voice,  and  is  moved  to  good 

271 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

resolutions  as  at  no  otlicr  period  of  the  year;  and  in 
the  mining  regions,  first  in  California  and  later  in 
Colorado,  the  hardened  reprobate,  dying  in  his  boots, 
smells  his  mother's  dough-nuts,  and  breathes  his  last 
in  a  soliloquized  vision  of  the  old  home,  and  the  lit- 
tle brother,  or  sister,  or  the  old  father  coming  to  meet 
him  from  heaven;  while  his  rude  companions  listen 
round  him,  and  dry  their  eyes  on  the  butts  of  their 
revolvers. 

It  has  to  be  very  grim,  all  that,  to  be  truly  effective ; 
and  here,  already,  we  have  a  touch  in  the  American- 
ized Christmas  story  of  the  moralistic  quality  of  the 
American  Thanksgiving  story.  This  was  seldom  writ- 
ten, at  first,  for  the  mere  entertainment  of  the  reader ; 
it  was  meant  to  entertain  him,  of  course;  but  it  was 
meant  to  edify  him,  too,  and  to  improve  him;  and 
some  such  intention  is  still  present  in  it.  I  rather 
think  that  it  deals  more  probably  with  character  to 
this  end  than  its  English  cousin,  the  Christmas  story, 
does.  It  is  not  so  improbable  that  a  man  should  leave 
off  being  a  drunkard  on  Thanksgiving,  as  that  he 
should  leave  off  being  a  curmudgeon  on  Christmas; 
that  he  should  conquer  his  appetite  as  that  he  should 
instantly  change  his  nature,  by  good  resolutions.  He 
would  be  very  likely,  indeed,  to  break  his  resolutions 
in  either  case,  but  not  so  likely  in  the  one  as  in  the 
other. 

Generically,  the  Thanksgiving  story  is  cheerfuller 
in  its  drama  and  simpler  in  its  persons  than  the 
Christmas  story.  Rarely  has  it  dealt  with  the  super- 
natural, either  the  apparition  of  ghosts  or  the  inter- 
vention of  angels.  The  weather  being  so  much  milder 
at  the  close  of  !N^ovember  than  it  is  a  month  later,  very 
little  can  be  done  with  the  elements ;  though  on  the 
coast  a  northeasterly  storm  has  been,  and  can  be,  very 

272 


CEITICISM   AND   FICTION 

usefully  employed.  The  Thanksgiving  story  is  more 
restricted  in  its  range ;  the  scene  is  still  mostly  in  New 
England,  and  the  characters  are  of  New  England  ex- 
traction, who  come  home  frqm  the  West  usually,  or 
New  York,  for  the  event  of  the  little  drama,  whatever 
it  may  be.  It  may  be  the  reconciliation  of  kinsfolk 
who  have  quarrelled ;  or  the  union  of  lovers  long 
estranged ;  or  husbands  and  wives  who  have  had  hard 
words  and  parted ;  or  mothers  who  had  thought  their 
sons  dead  in  California  and  find  themselves  agreeably 
disappointed  in  their  return ;  or  fathers  who  for  old 
time's  sake  receive  back  their  erring  and  conveniently 
dying  daughters.  The  notes  are  not  many  which  this 
simple  music  sounds,  but  they  have  a  Sabbath  tone, 
mostly,  and  win  the  listener  to  kindlier  thoughts  and 
better  moods.  The  art  is  at  its  highest  in  some  strong 
sketch  of  Rose  Terry  Cooke's,  or  some  perfectly  satis- 
fying study  of  Miss  Jewett's,  or  some  graphic  situa- 
tion of  Miss  Wilkins's ;  and  then  it  is  a  very  fine  art. 
But  mostly  it  is  poor  and  rude  enough,  and  makes 
openly,  shamelessly,  for  the  reader's  emotions,  as  well 
as  his  morals.  It  is  inclined  to  be  rather  descriptive. 
The  turkey,  the  j^nmpkin,  the  corn-field,  figure  through- 
out ;  and  the  leafless  woods  are  blue  and  cold  against 
the  evening  sky  behind  the  low  hip-roofed,  old-fash- 
ioned homestead.  The  parlance  is  usually  the  Yankee 
dialect  and  its  Western  modifications. 

The  Thanksgiving  story  is  mostly  confined  in  scene 
to  the  country;  it  does  not  seem  possible  to  do  much 
with  it  in  town ;  and  it  is  a  serious  question , whether 
with  its  geographical  and  topical  limitations  it  can 
hold  its  own  against  the  Christmas  story;  and  whether 
it  Avould  not  be  well  for  authors  to  consider  a  combina- 
tion with  its  elder  rival. 

The  two  feasts  are  so  near  together  in  point  of  time 
273 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

that  tliej  could  be  easily  covered  by  the  sentiment  of 
even  a  brief  narrative.  Under  the  agglutinated  style 
of  A  Thanksgiving-Christmas  Story,  fiction  appropri- 
ate to  both  could  be  produced,  and  both  could  be  em- 
ployed naturally  and  probably  in  the  transaction  of 
its  affairs  and  the  development  of  its  characters.  The 
plot  for  such  a  story  could  easily  be  made  to  include  a 
total-abstinence  pledge  and  family  reunion  at  Thanks- 
giving, and  an  apparition  and  spiritual  regeneration 
over  a  bowl  of  punch  at  Christmas. 


XXVI 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  the  far  beginnings 
of  holiday  literature,  and  I  commend  the  quest  to  the 
scientific  spirit  which  now  specializes  research  in  every 
branch  of  history.  In  the  mean  time,  without  being 
too  confident  of  the  facts,  I  venture  to  suggest  that  it 
came  in  with  the  romantic  movement  about  the  begin- 
ning of  this  century,  when  mountains  ceased  to  be 
horrid  and  became  picturesque ;  when  ruins  of  all  sorts, 
but  particularly  abbeys  and  castles,  became  habitable 
to  the  most  delicate  constitutions;  when  the  despised 
Gothick  of  Addison  dropped  its  "  k,"  and  arose  the 
chivalrous  and  religious  Gothic  of  Scott;  when  ghosts 
were  redeemed  from  the  contempt  into  which  they  had 
fallen,  and  resumed  their  jDlace  in  polite  society;  in 
fact,  the  politer  the  society,  the  welcomer  the  ghosts, 
and  whatever  else  was  out  of  the  common.  In  that  day 
the  Annual  flourished,  and  this  artificial  flower  was 
probably  the  first  literary  blossom  on  the  Christmas 
Tree  which  has  since  borne  so  much  tinsel  foliage  and 
painted  fruit.  But  the  Annual  was  extremely  Orient- 
al; it  was  much  preoccupied  with  Haidees  and  Gul- 

274 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

nares  and  Zuleikas,  -with  Ilindas  and  Noiirmahals, 
owing  to  the  distinction  which  Byron  and  Moore  had 
given  such  ladies;  and  when  it  began  to  concern  itself 
with  the  actualities  of  British  beauty,  the  daughters  of 
Albion,  though  inscribed  with  the  names  of  real  count- 
esses and  duchesses,  betrayed  their  descent  from  the 
well  -  known  Eastern  odalisques.  It  was  possibly 
through  an  American  that  holiday  literature  became 
distinctively  English  in  material,  and  Washington 
Irving,  with  his  New  World  love  of  the  past,  may  have 
given  the  impulse  to  the  literary  worship  of  Christmas 
which  has  since  so  widely  established  itself.  A  festival 
revived  in  popular  interest  by  a  New-Yorker  to  whom 
Dutch  associations  with  New-year's  had  endeared  the 
German  ideal  of  Christmas,  and  whom  the  robust 
gayeties  of  the  season  in  old-fashioned  country-houses 
had  charmed,  would  be  one  of  those  roundabout  results 
which  destiny  likes,  and  "  w^ould  at  least  be  Early  Eng- 
lish." 

If  we  cannot  claim  with  all  the  patriotic  confi- 
dence we  should  like  to  feel  that  it  was  Irving  who 
set  Christmas  in  that  light  in  which  Dickens  saw  its 
aesthetic  capabilities,  it  is  perhaps  because  all  origins 
are  obscure.  For  anything  that  we  positively  know 
to  the  contrary,  the  Druidic  rites  from  which  English 
Christmas  borrowed  the  inviting  mistletoe,  if  not  the 
decorative  holly,  may  have  been  accompanied  by  the 
recitations  of  holiday  triads.  But  it  is  certain  that 
several  plays  of  Shakespeare  were  produced,  if  not 
w^ritten,  for  the  celebration  of  the  holidays,  and  that 
then  the  black  tide  of  Puritanism  which  swept  over 
men's  souls  blotted  out  all  such  observance  of  Christ- 
mas with  the  festival  itself.  It  came  in  again,  by  a 
natural  reaction,  with  the  returning  Stuarts,  and 
throughout  the  period  of  the  Restoration  it  enjoyed  a 

275 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

perfunctory  favor.  There  is  mention  of  it  often  enough 
in  the  eighteenth-centurj  essayists,  in  the  Spectators 
and  Idlers  and  Tatlers;  hut  the  World  ahout  the  mid- 
dle of  the  last  century  laments  the  neglect  into  which 
it  had  fallen.  Irving  seems  to  have  been  the  first  to 
observe  its  surviving  rites  lovingly,  and  Dickens  di- 
vined its  immense  advantage  as  a  literary  occasion.  He 
made  it  in  some  sort  entirely  his  for  a  time,  and  there 
can  be  no  question  but  it  was  he  who  again  endeared 
it  to  the  whole  English-speaking  world,  and  gave  it  a 
wider  and  deeper  hold  than  it  had  ever  had  before 
upon  the  fancies  and  affections  of  our  race. 

The  might  of  that  great  talent  no  one  can  gainsay, 
though  in  the  light  of  the  truer  work  which  has  since 
been  done  his  literary  principles  seem  almost  as  gTO- 
tesque  as  his  theories  of  political  economy.  In  no  one 
direction  was  his  erring  force  more  felt  than  in  the 
creation  of  holiday  literature  as  we  have  kno^^^l  it  for 
the  last  half-century.  Creation,  of  course,  is  the  wrong 
word ;  it  says  too  much ;  but  in  default  of  a  better  word, 
it  may  stand.  He  did  not  make  something  out  of  noth- 
ing; the  material  was  there  before  him;  the  mood  and 
even  the  need  of  his  time  contributed  immensely  to 
his  success,  as  the  volition  of  the  subject  helps  on  the 
mesmerist ;  but  it  is  within  bounds  to  say  that  he  was 
the  chief  agency  in  the  development  of  holiday  litera- 
ture as  we  have  knowm  it,  as  he  was  the  chief  agency 
in  universalizing  the  great  Christian  holiday  as  we  now 
have  it.  Other  agencies  wrought  with  him  and  after 
him  ;  but  it  was  he  who  rescued  Christmas  from  Puritan 
distrust,  and  humanized  it  and  consecrated  it  to  the 
hearts  and  homes  of  all. 

Very  rough  magic,  as  it  now  seems,  he  used  in  work- 
ing his  miracle,  but  there  is  no  doubt  about  his  work- 
ing it.     One  opens  his  Christmas  stories  in  this  later 

27G 


CRITICISM  AND  FICTION 

day — The  Carol,  The  Chimes,  The  Haunted  Man,  The 
Cricket  on  the  Hearth,  and  all  the  rest — and  with  "  a 
heart  high-sorrowful  and  cloyed,"  asks  himself  for  the 
])retcrnatiiral  virtue  that  they  once  had.  The  pathos 
appears  false  and  strained:  the  humor  largely  horse- 
play; the  character  theatrical;  the  joviality  pumped; 
the  psychology  commonplace;  the  sociology  alone 
funny.  It  is  a  world  of  real  clothes,  earth,  air,  water, 
and  the  rest;  the  people  often  speak  the  language  of 
life,  but  their  motives  are  as  disproportioned  and  im- 
probable, and  their  passions  and  purposes  as  over- 
charged, as  those  of  the  worst  of  Balzac's  people.  Yet 
all  these  monstrosities,  as  they  now  appear,  seem  to 
have  once  had  s^Tumetry  and  verity;  they  moved  the 
most  cultivated  intelligences  of  the  time ;  they  touched 
true  hearts;  they  made  everybody  laugh  and  cry. 

This  was  perhaps  because  the  imagination,  from  hav- 
ing been  fed  mostly  upon  gross  unrealities,  always  re- 
sponds readily  to  fantastic  appeals.  There  has  been  an 
amusing  sort  of  awe  of  it,  as  if  it  were  the  channel 
of  inspired  thought,  and  were  somehow  sacred.  The 
most  preposterous  inventions  of  its  activity  have  been 
regarded  in  their  time  as  the  greatest  feats  of  the 
human  mind,  and  in  its  receptive  form  it  has  been 
nursed  into  an  imbecility  to  which  the  truth  is  repug- 
nant, and  the  fact  that  the  beautiful  resides  nowhere 
else  is  inconceivable.  It  has  been  flattered  out  of  all 
sufferance  in  its  toyings  with  the  mere  elements  of 
character,  and  its  attempts  to  present  these  in  com- 
binations foreign  to  experience  are  still  praised  by 
the  poorer  sort  of  critics  as  masterpieces  of  creative 
work. 

In  the  day  of  Dickens's  early  Christmas  stories  it 
was  thought  admirable  for  the  author  to  take  types  of 
humanity  which  everybody  knew,  and  to  add  to  them 

277 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

from  liis  imagination  till  they  were  as  strange  as  beasts 
and  birds  talking.  Now  we  begin  to  feel  that  human 
nature  is  quite  enough,  and  that  the  best  an  author  can 
do  is  to  show  it  as  it  is.  But  in  those  stories  of  his 
Dickens  said  to  his  readers,  Let  us  make  believe  so-and- 
so;  and  the  result  was  a  joint  juggle,  a  child's-play, 
in  which  the  wholesome  allegiance  to  life  was  lost. 
Artistically,  therefore,  the  scheme  was  false,  and  artis- 
tically, therefore,  it  must  perish.  It  did  not  perish, 
however,  before  it  had  propagated  itself  in  a  whole 
school  of  unrealities  so  ghastly  that  one  can  hardly  re- 
call without  a  shudder  those  sentimentalities  at  second- 
hand to  which  holiday  literature  was  abandoned  long 
after  the  original  conjurer  had  wearied  of  his  per- 
formance. 

Under  his  own  eye  and  of  conscious  purpose  a  circle 
of  imitators  grew  up  in  the  fabrication  of  Christmas 
stories.  They  obviously  formed  themselves  upon  his 
sobered  ideals;  they  collaborated  with  him,  and  it  was 
often  hard  to  know  whether  it  was  Dickens  or  Sala  or 
Collins  who  was  writing.  The  Christmas  book  had  by 
that  time  lost  its  direct  application  to  Christmas.  It 
dealt  with  shipwrecks  a  good  deal,  and  with  perilous  ad- 
ventures of  all  kinds,  and  with  unmerited  suffering,  and 
with  ghosts  and  mysteries,  because  human  nature,  se- 
cure from  storm  and  danger  in  a  well  -  lighted  room 
before  a  cheerful  fire,  likes  to  have  these  things  imaged 
for  it,  and  its  long-puerilized  fancy  will  bear  an  end- 
less repetition  of  them.  The  wizards  who  wrought 
their  spells  with  them  contented  themselves  with  the 
lasting  efficacy  of  these  simple  means ;  and  the  appren- 
tice -  wizards  and  journeyman  -  wizards  who  have  suc- 
ceeded them  practise  the  same  arts  at  the  old  stand ;  but 
the  ethical  intention  which  gave  dignity  to  Dickens^s 
Christmas  stories  of  still  earlier  date  has  almost  wholly 

278 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

disappeared.  It  was  a  quality  whicli  could  not  be 
worked  so  long  as  the  pliantoms  and  hair  -  breadth 
escapes.  People  always  knew  that  character  is  not 
changed  by  a  dream  in  a  series  of  tableaux ;  that  a 
ghost  cannot  do  much  towards  reforming  an  inordi- 
nately selfish  person;  that  a  life  cannot  be  turned 
white,  like  a  head  of  hair,  in  a  single  night,  by  the 
most  allegorical  apparition;  that  want  and  sin  and 
shame  cannot  be  cured  by  kettles  singing  on  the  hob; 
and  gradually  they  ceased  to  make  believe  that  there 
was  virtue  in  these  devices  and  appliances.  Yet  the  eth- 
ical intention  was  not  fruitless,  crude  as  it  now  ap- 
pears. 

It  was  well  once  a  year,  if  not  oftener,  to  remind  men 
by  parable  of  the  old,  simple  truths ;  to  teach  them  that 
forgiveness,  and  charity,  and  the  endeavor  for  life 
better  and  purer  than  each  has  lived,  are  the  principles 
upon  which  alone  the  world  holds  together  and  gets 
forward.  It  was  well  for  the  comfortable  and  the  re- 
fined to  be  put  in  mind  of  the  savagery  and  suffering 
all  round  them,  and  to  be  taught,  as  Dickens  was 
always  teaching,  that  certain  feelings  which  grace 
human  nature,  as  tenderness  for  the  sick  and  helpless, 
self-sacrifice  and  generosity,  self-respect  and  manliness 
and  womanliness,  are  the  common  heritage  of  the  race, 
the  direct  gift  of  Heaven,  shared  equally  by  the  rich 
and  poor.  It  did  not  necessarily  detract  from  the  value 
of  the  lesson  that,  with  the  imperfect  art  of  the  time, 
he  made  his  paupers  and  porters  not  only  human,  but 
superhuman,  and  too  altogether  virtuous;  and  it  re- 
mained true  that  home  life  may  be  lovely  under  the 
lowliest  roof,  although  he  liked  to  paint  it  without  a 
shadow  on  its  beauty  there.  It  is  still  a  fact  that  the 
sick  are  very  often  saintly,  although  he  put  no  peevish- 
ness into  their  patience  with  their  ills.     His  ethical 

279 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

intention  told  for  manhood  and  fraternity  and  toler- 
ance, and  when  this  intention  disa^Dpeared  from  the 
better  holiday  literature,  that  literature  was  sensibly 
the  poorer  for  the  loss. 


XXVII 

But  if  the  humanitarian  impulse  has  mostly  disap- 
peared from  Christmas  fiction,  I  think  it  has  never 
so  generally  characterized  all  fiction.  One  may  refuse 
to  recognize  this  impulse ;  one  may  deny  that  it  is  in 
any  greater  degree  shaping  life  than  ever  before,  but 
no  one  who  has  the  current  of  literature  under  his  eye 
can  fail  to  note  it  there.  People  are  thinking  and 
feeling  generously,  if  not  living  justly,  in  our  time; 
it  is  a  day  of  anxiety  to  be  saved  from  the  curse  that 
is  on  selfishness,  of  eager  question  how  others  shall  be 
helped,  of  bold  denial  that  the  conditions  in  which 
we  would  fain  have  rested  are  sacred  or  immutable. 
Especially  in  America,  where  the  race  has  gained  a 
height  never  reached  before,  the  eminence  enables 
more  men  than  ever  before  to  see  how  even  here  vast 
masses  of  men  are  sunk  in  misery  that  must  gTow 
every  day  more  hopeless,  or  embroiled  in  a  struggle  for 
mere  life  that  must  end  in  enslaving  and  imbruting 
them. 

Art,  indeed,  is  beginning  to  find  out  that  if  it  does 
not  make  friends  with  Need  it  must  perish.  It  per- 
ceives that  to  take  itself  from  the  many  and  leave 
them  no  joy  in  their  work,  and  to  give  itself  to  the  few 
whom  it  can  bring  no  joy  in  their  idleness,  is  an  error 
that  kills.  The  men  and  women  who  do  the  hard  work 
of  the  w^orld  have  learned  that  they  have  a  right  to 
pleasure  in  their  toil,  and  that  when  justice  is  done 

280 


CRITICISM  AND  FICTION 

them  they  will  have  it.  In  all  ages  poetry  has  affirmed 
something"  of  this  sort,  but  it  remained  for  onrvS  to  per- 
ceive it  and  express  it  somehow  in  every  form  of  litera- 
ture. But  this  is  only  one  phase  of  the  devotion  of  the 
best  literature  of  our  time  to  the  service  of  humanity. 
'No  book  written  with  a  low  or  cynical  motive  could  suc- 
ceed now,  no  matter  how  brilliantly  written;  and  the 
work  done  in  the  past  to  the  glorification  of  mere  pas- 
sion and  power,  to  the  deification  of  self,  appears  mon- 
strous and  hideous.  The  romantic  spirit  worshipped 
genius,  Avorshipped  heroism,  but  at  its  best,  in  such  a 
man  as  Victor  Hugo,  this  spirit  recognized  the  supreme 
claim  of  the  lowest  humanity.  Its  error  was  to  ideal- 
ize the  victims  of  society,  to  paint  them  impossibly 
virtuous  and  beautiful;  but  truth,  which  has  succeed- 
ed to  the  highest  mission  of  romance,  paints  these  vic- 
tims as  they  are,  and  bids  the  world  consider  them  not 
because  they  are  beautiful  and  virtuous,  but  because 
they  are  ugly  and  vicious,  cruel,  filthy,  and  only  not 
altogether  loathsome  because  the  divine  can  never 
wholly  die  out  of  the  human.  The  truth  does  not  find 
these  victims  among  the  poor  alone,  among  the  hun- 
gry, the  houseless,  the  ragged ;  but  it  also  finds  them 
among  the  rich,  cursed  with  the  airalessness,  the  satiety, 
the  despair  of  wealth,  wasting  their  lives  in  a  fool's 
paradise  of  shows  and  semblances,  with  nothing  real 
but  the  misery  that  comes  of  insincerity  and  selfish- 
ness. 

I  do  not  think  the  fiction  of  our  own  time  even  al- 
ways equal  to  this  work,  or  perhaps  more  than  seldom 
so.  But  as  I  once  expressed,  to  the  long-reverberating 
discontent  of  two  continents,  fiction  is  now  a  finer  art 
than  it  has  been  hitherto,  and  more  nearly  meets  the 
requirements  of  the  infallible  standard.  I  have  hopes 
of  real  usefulness  in  it,  because  it  is  at  last  building 

281 


CRITICISM  AND   FICTION 

on  the  only  sure  foundation ;  but  I  am  by  no  means 
certain  that  it  will  be  the  ultimate  literary  form,  or 
will  remain  as  important  as  we  believe  it  is  destined 
to  become.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  quite  imaginable 
that  when  the  great  mass  of  readers,  now  sunk  in  the 
foolish  joys  of  mere  fable,  shall  be  lifted  to  an  in- 
terest in  the  meaning  of  things  through  the  faithful 
portrayal  of  life  in  fiction,  then  fiction  the  most  faith- 
ful may  be  superseded  by  a  still  more  faithful  form  of 
contemporaneous  history.  I  willingly  leave  the  pre- 
cise character  of  this  form  to  the  more  robust  imagina- 
tion of  readers  whose  minds  have  been  nurtured  upon 
romantic  novels,  and  who  really  have  an  imagination 
worth  speaking  of,  and  confine  myself,  as  usual,  to  the 
hither  side  of  the  regions  of  conjecture. 

The  art  which  in  the  mean  time  disdains  the  office  of 
teacher  is  one  of  the  last  refuges  of  the  aristocratic 
spirit  which  is  disappearing  from  politics  and  society, 
and  is  now  seeking  to  shelter  itself  in  aesthetics.  The 
pride  of  caste  is  becoming  the  pride  of  taste;  but  as 
before,  it  is  averse  to  the  mass  of  men ;  it  consents 
to  know  them  only  in  some  conventionalized  and  arti- 
ficial guise.  It  seeks  to  withdraw  itself,  to  stand  aloof ; 
to  be  distinguished,  and  not  to  be  identified.  Democ- 
racy in  literature  is  tlie  reverse  of  all  this.  It  wishes 
to  know  and  to  tell  the  truth,  confident  that  consolation 
and  delight  are  there;  it  does  not  care  to  paint  tho 
marvellous  and  impossible  for  the  vulgar  many,  or  to 
sentimentalize  and  falsify  the  actual  for  the  vulgar 
few.  Men  are  more  like  than  unlike  one  another:  let 
us  make  them  know  one  another  better,  that  they  may 
be  all  humbled  and  strengthened  with  a  sense  of  their 
fraternity.  Neither  arts,  nor  letters,  nor  sciences,  ex- 
cept as  they  somehow,  clearly  or  obscurely,  tend  to 
make  the  race  better  and  kinder,  are  to  be  regarded  as 

282 


CRITICISM   AND   FICTION 

serious  interests;  they  are  all  lower  tlian  the  rudest 
crafts  that  feed  and  house  and  clothe,  for  except  they 
do  this  office  they  are  idle ;  and  they  cannot  do  this  ex- 
cept from  and  through  the  truth. 


THE    END 


14  DAY  USE 

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LOAN  DEPT. 


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14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

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